


Luminous

by SpellCleaver



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Betaed, Character Study, Druids, Fairy Tale Elements, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Gen, Horror, Luke Skywalker Needs A Hug, POV Luke Skywalker, Post-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, There Is Something In The Woods, Vampires, Whump, Worldbuilding, a lot of musings about Fear, but he's not in a good place right now, luke is trying his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28934700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpellCleaver/pseuds/SpellCleaver
Summary: It's several months after the confrontation on Bespin when Luke and Leia receive intelligence that Fett may have appeared on the backwater planet of Venaira—and may have brought Han with him. Naturally, they have to investigate.But Venaira used to have a different branch of Force wielders to Jedi, known as the ladies of the forest, until something happened twenty years ago that left the place in darkness. Whatever happened, it seems contained to that forest; so long as they stay out of it, they should be fine.Of course, when Darth Vader shows up hunting for Luke, they aren't left with many options...
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader
Comments: 139
Kudos: 182
Collections: 2020 Star Wars Winter Exchange





	1. Day 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyVader23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyVader23/gifts).



> This was written for the second fic exchange organised by SilverDaye this winter; my giftee is LadyVader23, and I was so excited to write for her again!
> 
> The prompts I was given, and tried to incorporate, were:  
> \- Why are you still awake?  
> \- Come with me.  
> \- Can I have hug?
> 
> But, most of this was inspired less by the prompts, and more what I thought Lady would like, so I hope I was right :D And I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Many thanks to [zoryany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoryany/pseuds/zoryany) for betaing this chapter <3

Venaira was a strange world.

Luke could honestly say that he had no idea why Boba Fett would've ever hidden out here with Han. Their intel may have come from a reliable source—at least, someone who generally knew what they were talking about regarding the _Empire's_ movements in this sleepy section of space—but he didn't see it. The planet was wreathed and clogged with clouds from orbit, and when they broke atmosphere to make it _through_ the clouds, all they saw before them was a vast expanse of trees.

There was water in the distance, the maps read. Massive lakes, bigger than the Dune Sea, some salty, some fresh, some so choked with chalk and other ground minerals that they shone different colours. The weather grew more humid in the area a continent over, the fog retreated, the distant blue sun shone brightly, and the many minerals in the earth led to a massive range of colourful plants, landscapes. Apparently it was a popular resort for artists to visit when on retreat, seeking to reinvigorate their muses with the array of rainbow trees, waters and soils.

That was not this continent, though. Of course.

The part of the planet that their informant had directed them to was a sleepy little town called Falcou, balanced precariously on the edge of a valley, beside a waterfall that gushed down, down, down. As the shuttle passed over the valley, Luke found himself staring at those falls in awe: white as crushed pearls, three times as wide as the breadth of the town, the torrent streamed off the sharp, striped rock and into a basin, before winding lazily towards the thick, black forest that consumed most of the valley depths like a bruise. He glanced up again when he saw the silver thread vanish beneath the canopy.

"That's a lot of water," he murmured.

Leia didn't reply to him; just smiled slightly, keeping her gaze on the ridge. Luke followed her line of sight and blew out a breath through gritted teeth when he saw what she was looking at: the Imperial fighter base perched a few more klicks up the hill from the town.

Before their eyes, a swarm of TIEs took flight to buzz around the other side of the hill, disappearing from sight.

"I don't like how close they are," Leia murmured.

"Our informant said it was a quiet town, right? How can it be quiet if the Imps are right there?"

"There's a small doonium mine in the neighbouring valley. It ran dry years ago, during the Clone Wars, but the Empire still have to have a garrison stationed here to keep an idea on anyone attempting to—"

"Get anything else out of it," Luke finished. "And sell to the Alliance."

"Yes. Falcou is quiet most of the time, but the moment the Imps go on leave they're there and rowdy—there's nowhere else to go, after all."

Luke's gaze was drawn inexorably back to the forest, and the thundering water that hurtled past it, then into it. "Not fans of white-water rafting? Hiking?"

" _You've_ heard of white-water rafting?"

"The Rogues tell me the only thing more exciting is a dogfight."

Leia snorted. "Of course they do."

Their shuttle—an old trader's ship, lent to them by a friend of Lando's from Takodana—continued to coast down towards Falcou in a leisurely flight path, the woods yawning directly underneath them. Cold nipped at the back of Luke's skull; he glanced down, frowning, and had never felt so much like…

Like…

_Like we're being watched._

He reached for his lightsaber—then remembered he had none. Just a collection of parts in his bag, and no crystal for its core.

Leia saw the expression on his face. "Don't tell me you have a bad feeling about this."

"I don't like this. The Imps," except it wasn't the Imps, actually, it was—"the woods—"

"Don't— we can't be ridiculous. We can't jump at shadows. Woods," Leia glanced down at them pointedly, squaring her jaw, "are woods. We— we had valleys just like this one on Alderaan. Filled with pine, and snow in the winter… They're fine."

Luke winced at the naked pain in her voice. "I still don't like this," he said carefully. He remembered this feeling, this _cold_ ; he remembered it from—

That cave on Dagobah. Seeing his own face as a monster's.

The gantry on Bespin. Learning his own blood was a monster's.

No. No. He wouldn't think about any of that.

"I think it's something to do with the F—"

"It can't be, Luke," Leia said, frowning. "It must just be instincts—and no matter what our instincts say, nothing seems to be wrong right now. We need to find Han."

Luke said, " _Our_ instincts?"

"Yeah." Her frown deepened. "I feel it too."

Well.

Considering how good Leia's instincts were even without the Force, that boded well.

"Don't look at the forest," Leia commanded. "That's not where the informant said Fett is—they said Falcou. We need to keep our eyes on there. With any luck, we won't have to deal with the forest at all."

He did turn his gaze, then: on the rustic houses, ramshackled together in bundles on the side of the hill, cresting the slope and teetering beside the waterfalls, warm red against the harsh white. There was a landing pad slightly above them—unnervingly close to the Imperial base, but that was the price they paid.

Hopefully, they would see no troopers. And hopefully they were far enough away from major Imperial lanes to be recognised.

Two faces couldn't be plastered across the _whole_ galaxy, right?

The comm crackled with the bored voice of whoever was manning the landing pad. _"Transport_ Lodestar _, please confirm your trajectory and continue the landing cycle."_

Leia's voice was more well-known than Luke's, so it was Luke who replied. "Falcou Landing Base, this is _Lodestar._ Transmitting projected trajectory and starting the landing cycle now."

The moment the comm clicked off, Luke glanced at Leia. "Go and get changed," he said. He was already wearing the cargo trousers, tan poncho and hiking boots that were expected for local tourists, but Leia had had to make a few holocalls on the trip here and hadn't changed out of her Rebel white yet.

She nodded, and vanished into the back.

Luke manoeuvred them in slowly but surely, resisting the urge to show off. By the time Leia was out again, he'd signed the paperwork, forked over the credits, and bought themselves a week's stay.

In case they should need it.

He grabbed his pack and slung it over his shoulder, glancing sideways at his friend. Her hair, instead of in its usual elaborate styles, trailed over her back in two long plaits, held in check by a brown bandana; she wore both the hairstyle and the ratty jacket and boots like they were crown jewels.

Luke thought the jacket may have been Han's—it was slightly too big for her—but he didn't question it. He missed him too.

Han was why they were here in the first place.

"Ready to go?" he asked with a sunny smile. Everything he could see, including the both of them, was drab and dull in the gunmetal light filtering through the thick clouds.

Leia clipped the straps of her rucksack together across her front, and stood at the edge of the path, looking down into the valley.

It would have been a spectacular view had the forest not looked even darker and denser up close.

Leia narrowed her eyes at it, like she wanted to fight the trees.

"Let's go find Fett," she said.

* * *

Falcou was exactly what Luke had been expecting: a sleepy little town, just like Anchorhead. And just like Anchorhead, the strangers were glared at.

They'd tried fishing for information at the local tavern, which looked like it would fall apart at a stiff breeze, but that didn't work. Luke and Leia just sat at their booth, smiling and trying to talk to each patron nearby, but received only distrustful looks in return.

Luke found himself fervently wishing that Han, in all his shameless, swaggering glory, was here. Leia may know how to glean information from diplomats, but when it came to hushed interrogations in cantinas—

Well. Considering he'd been shot at the day Luke had met him, they always either went very well or very poorly.

But at least they _went_.

Eventually, Leia evidently got tired of sitting in the corner trying to make a _nice_ first impression, and dragged herself to her feet—just marched straight up to the nearest, biggest table and sat herself at the end with her drink. She hadn't taken a single sip of it—it looked awful, and as a princess she was more accustomed to fine wines and less to the half-poisonous moonshine Luke's pilots consumed regularly—but she made a good show of _looking_ like she had.

"Hello," she said with a smile—pleasant enough to be _slightly_ welcoming, vicious enough to make it clear they couldn't back out of this conversation. "I'm Josie—my brother Abidan and I here are new—"

"That's obvious," a middle-aged human man snorted, looking Luke up and down before turning away. The young man next to him—presumably his son—looked at Luke more appreciatively, but was evidently still dismissive. Unimpressed.

Luke stood and made his way over to sit next to Leia, making sure his blaster was visible the whole way over, and gave a more amiable smile than Leia's when he met the young man's eye.

"Well, obviousness aside," Leia said, "we're here looking for a lost uncle of ours—we had no idea he'd even survived the earthquake back home until we heard he'd moved near here. Have you seen him? Tan face, lots of scars, tends to wear armour a lot?" Somehow, the Alliance had got hold of a description of Fett's face in their research—the knowledge he was a clone of Jango Fett had been a surprise to Luke, but he supposed he'd heard of stranger things since he left Tatooine. "I've heard he comes and goes."

She swallowed suddenly and Luke gave her a concerned look, covering her hand with his and using the other to rest it lightly on her hand. She leaned into the touch lightly and said, voice thick, "We're… it's been so many years, we're very worried about him—"

Luke looked up through his eyelashes to meet the son's eyes. The father seemed more guarded—sympathetic, grimacing at the story, yet guarded—but the son…

"I heard of an armoured man coming through here, a few years ago," he said. "He stayed at the Rainbow Inn down the road from here, then found lodging somewhere else. I assume it was permanent—I've seen him a few times since then, from across town, still wearing that strange armour, but I've never seen him come and go from the spaceport. Wherever his ship is, it's not docked there."

That made sense. There certainly hadn't been any _Slave I_ in the same place they'd docked the _Lodestar_.

Leia beamed, and leaned forwards to clasp the young man's hand. "Thank you so much," she said emphatically, and the man blushed at the attention. "Did you say the Rainbow Inn was near here?"

"Yeah, just over the ridge—"

"Down the hill," his father interrupted briefly. "Not up it. Up it is the windmill and the women who run it, and you want to avoid them."

Luke frowned. "Avoid them? Why?"

The man spat on the floor. "Witches."

"Retired ladies of the forest," his son corrected with a stern look. "Like Grandma was—"

The man snapped. "Your Grandma left that creed to get married, and she stayed friends with them for life after. _Those_ ladies were kicked out when the forest turned dark, and anything too dark for the forest nowadays is _definitely_ too dark for random travellers who look like they wouldn't survive a fight with a tooka."

Luke tried not to take offence. "Ladies of the forest?" he asked politely. He… that forest had given him bad vibes, but…

The man eyed him suspiciously. "How'd you get that scar on your face, kid?"

_Mauled by a wampa when in the middle of a civil war._ "I tried riding an eopie once. Fell on my face in the sand on some rocks and my aunt had to stitch me up again." Luke tried to stop his voice was shaking, or sounding uncertain—was he convincing? Did he—

"Eopie?" The man glanced between them, narrowing his eyes further at Leia's pale complexion. "You two from Tatooine then?"

"Only til we were twelve," Leia lied smoothly. "I go pale and drop accents easily, apparently, but _somebody_ "—she elbowed Luke in the ribs—"kept clinging on."

He shrugged, despite the tension in his shoulders, batting the back of her head lightly. "It's home."

"No, it's a shithole."

"She's right," the son pointed out teasingly. Luke laughed a little and smiled at him.

"Thank you so much for your help," he said, letting his own earnestness—and relief—shine through as he stood up. "I just hope we'll be able to find our uncle again—after so many years…"

"You'd best hope he didn't settle around here after all."

Luke blinked. Leia, who'd taken Luke's hand and been rising gracefully to her feet, paused, giving the older man a curious look.

"I beg your pardon?"

"A good few years off Tatooine indeed," the guy muttered to himself. Then he repeated: "I said you'd best hope he didn't settle here after all. I've seen him around, just like Sel here, but he don't live in Falcou. So if he lives around here, he lives in the Woods."

A shiver ran up Luke's spine at the way he said that.

_The Woods_.

"And it's been a good long while since I saw him." He raised his dirty glass in a mocking toast, an ironic smile quirking his lips. "So either he's taken the good choice and got the hell off this pile of dirt… or he snapped up that lovely cottage that was going for sale a few years back, and the Woods got him."

Luke stilled; cold dripped down his spine. When he glanced outside, he noticed idly that there were officers in Imperial uniform coming towards the tavern, troopers who'd taken their helmets off; it must be time for a few precious hours of leave from the base.

He was so stiff that it was Leia who laughed—nervously—tilted her head and asked, _"Got him?"_

"Don't go in there, kids. Not even for your lost uncle." He put his glass back down on the table. It was empty. When had it been emptied? "Your parents will want you back, with or without him."

Luke just gave him a tight smile—then gripped Leia's hand tightly. They should get out of here before the troopers came in and risked recognition.

"Thank you again," Leia said. "And… we'll… Well, he's the only family we've got left. That's why we're looking at him."

Luke tried not to think about Han.

Then he dragged Leia out, wrapping an arm around her like she was really his sister, and she tossed a few credits to the bartender, ducking their heads in faked laughter as they slipped outside—just as the troopers barged in.

They kept the ruse of murmured conversation up until they were a few streets away, and Luke's heart slowed its pounding.

"A cottage in the woods?" Leia asked. "Why would Fett want a cottage in the woods?"

"Maybe he wanted a holiday home in between bounties."

"But why would he come here _now_? With _Han_? That holo our informant sent us looked like it might be his face, but it wasn't clear, and we can't be wasting time exploring woods—"

"I'm more concerned about the _Woods_ themselves."

Leia rolled her eyes. "I know, I know—there's something off about them, but that was an older man who's clearly lived here all his life. Can you really tell me your aunt and uncle didn't have superstitions?"

"They called Old Ben a wizard." He paused. "Which they weren't wrong about. And Aunt Beru used to say that specific desert children were sometimes blessed with the ability to sense sandstorms and Sand People attacks before they ever came."

"And was that true?"

"I was one of those children," he said. "Never skipped a sandstorm."

"Then I think that was the Force."

"The Force is in everyone. Everything." He looked in the general direction of the forest—he didn't need to know what was down there, or why, to pinpoint exactly where it was. It scratched at the edges of his awareness.

And, he thought, he scratched at its.

But he was too far away for it to do anything about it.

Leia gritted her teeth. "It doesn't matter. If we have to go into those woods, we will." _For Han._

Leia, he thought distantly, was _terrifying_ when her single-minded dedication to duty was channelled into a single-minded dedication to a person.

He met it wholeheartedly. "Of course." As much as… as much as the similarities to that Dagobah cave, to the terrifying truthful coil of the dark side on Bespin, made him want to turn around and flee in the other direction. "We should… we should just be careful."

Though, maybe she was right. Maybe he was being jittery for no reason—he'd been jittery for months now, panicking at the tiniest things—and it was just standard superstition. It… it should be fine.

Leia snorted. "Us? Stopping, thinking things through, being careful? Who are you and what did you do with Luke Skywalker?"

He laughed at the jab—as he was meant to. It broke the tension.

And she was right.

Since when did _he_ worry so much about being careful, about not rushing into things?

He knew the answer.

"Let's go find that inn," he said. "Perhaps the innkeeper has more answers."

* * *

"An armoured bloke, huh?" The innkeeper was a stout woman with a broad smile; she reminded Luke of Aunt Beru. "You know, we've seen a lotta people come through here over the years, the odds of me remembering one specific person—"

"How many people come through decked out in armour that could withstand a blast from an ion cannon?" Leia asked—a little pointedly.

But, just like Aunt Beru would've, the innkeeper just chuckled.

"Fair point, fair point," she conceded. "I remember your uncle. He stayed wi' us three, maybe four times? Old Greoge in the tavern was right guessin' he'd set up shop in them woods. He spent a lotta time in there, somehow never getting caught by the Ghosts, always coming back… _himself_ —"

"Himself?" Luke interrupted. Leia glared at him and mouthed, _Let her talk_. He bit his lip.

"Y'know, lad. When you see a Ghost, that's it." She made a gesture with her hands around her temple; Luke had no idea what it meant.

"I… see." He did not see.

"But your uncle was always himself—though I guess he was paranoid and jittery enough before Ghosts ever started messing with his mind. From day one, he never stopped looking over his shoulder. He tried to make sure his was the only key to his room—tried to steal mine!"

"But now he's in the cottage in the woods?" Leia pressed.

"Yeah. I assume so, at least—haven't heard from him in a few months, but I'm pretty sure he had a nice place out there, ignoring the danger. Maybe he had a few trinkets from the wizard's temple, they might've—"

"The _wizard's temple_?" Luke burst out.

Leia glared again—but this time she was more sympathetic. The innkeeper gave Luke an odd look.

"Yeah, the wizards—I thought they were galaxy-wide under the Republic, though I guess they died out 'bout when you were born…" She fixed them with a look. "Empire don't want us to talk about 'em, but the ladies of the forest weren't proper wizards, I guess. What was the Core world term for them—"

"Jedi?" Luke suggested quietly. The pieces of the lightsaber he couldn't build lay heavy in his pack.

"That's it! The ladies weren't that. Had a different take on the magic, or whatever, something more in tune with Venaira herself than the stars. But they kept contact, they had a lot of friends with them Jedi—there was one _diplomat_ or another always passing through that spaceport and staying here 'fore heading into the woods, every month, no fails. Those were the good old days.

"But then," she waved her hand, "something went down with the war. I dunno, I don't follow politics, and I don't really care. But the ladies are gone now. And when they do show up, they're…"

She made the same hand gesture she'd made before: fingers wriggling beside her temple, vaguely imitating the shape of an explosion, more imitating a spinning motion.

"Anyway, the woods ain't safe now. Nowhere's safe without the ladies protecting us, but the woods? Don't go there. Wait for your uncle to come out." She drew a sheet of flimsi—a bill, and stars, wasn't _that_ archaic—and tapped it with her stylus. "We've got a room for yous if ya wanna rent it."

She glanced at Leia's wallet—clearly, she'd clocked that they'd loaded up with quite a few credits for this mission.

Leia smiled sweetly. "Seven days—six nights—please."

The innkeeper barked a laugh. "You're a savvy one." Then she scrawled something on the paper and pushed it over. "There's the bill."

Luke tried not to let his eyes bulge.

Leia had a much better grip on her expression, but it was still amusing to watch.

She sighed, and forked them over. The innkeeper closed her hands around the credits with a wide grin. "Pleasure doing business with ya! If you need anything in your room, just call for Martha. And if you need somewhere to rent a speeder tomorrow, I can give you an address for that, too—owned by my sister."

"Rent a speeder?" Luke asked.

She shrugged. "Well, you're gonna go _into_ the woods like a pair of crazies, aren't you?"

"Why would we do that?"

"Because you're looking for someone, and that's what most tourists do around here anyway. _But the woods are pretty! But they're famous! But the Bubbling Falls are the most well-known in the sector!_ "

Luke gritted his teeth.

"Whatever. Do what you want, kids; I can't stop you. Just know that my sister'll ask for a hefty deposit on that speeder."

Leia narrowed her eyes. "And why will she do that?"

"Same reason I made you pay all seven days in advance." Martha shrugged again, tossed them two physical metal keys with _Room 3_ stamped on them in white, and dropped the credits into a locked box.

"In case you don't come back."

* * *

It was a double bed in the room Martha had given them, but easily big enough for them both. Leia had apparently been so used to her massive bed on Alderaan for years that she still had problems hogging the space, but after a few light bruises, they'd settled down to sleep.

Except Luke couldn't.

Martha's words about the fall of the Jedi… he wanted to go down there and ask her more. He knew so little about why they'd fallen—other than the fact that _his father had turned and killed them all_ —and Yoda had said nothing— Yoda, if he returned to complete the training now, might _still_ say _nothing—_

Against his will, he felt his breathing quickening, and fought to calm himself. The presence lurking in the valley—the Ghosts? Whatever remained of those ladies? He didn't know and he didn't _want_ to know—slid a finger along his fear and ramped it up, until his heart was hammering in his chest—

He squeezed his eyes shut so hard he saw red and clenched his fists under the covers, even as Leia slept peacefully beside him.

No.

No, no, no.

He was safe.

Dark side or not, Vader couldn't get him. _His father_ couldn't get him.

He did not need to worry.

He would not turn and be like him.

He was not like him.

He was not—

His eyes blew open, breathing hard.

Fear was just the path to the dark side.

He did not have to step down it.

He was not fated to join Vader in darkness unless he feared that he was, and—

And that left him in a kriffed up dilemma, didn't it?

_I am here to save Han,_ he mouthed to himself, closing his eyes tightly again. _Han is more important._

_But I am so, so afraid._

"Why are you still awake?"

The soft-spoken words jumped out at him and he gasped, jerking away, even as Leia's cold hand found his arm in the bed and unfurled his clenched fingers gently. He took a deep breath and tried to relax.

"Luke?" she asked. "Are you alright?"

He let out that breath. "Yeah," he said. "I'm just…"

He glanced down, to see her brown eyes staring at him in the darkness, and turned away suddenly. Leia was brilliant. She was bold, and brave, and _brilliant_. He couldn't admit—

"Afraid?"

He stayed staring away, trying to blink away tears. "Yes. I know it's stu—"

"Afraid of what?"

He blinked. Tears dropped over his eyelids. "What?"

"Afraid of what? The woods? Because…"

He didn't want to tell her.

But nor did he want to lie to her.

"Since Bespin?" he whispered. "Everything."

His own shadow, morphing into a mask and cape.

The voice in his head, heavy and demanding.

The slightest touch of cold.

His own unchecked emotions that he was suddenly hyperaware aware could destroy him from the inside out.

He glanced back at Leia then; their gazes met for a charged second, before she rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling herself.

"I am too," she admitted. "Afraid, that is."

The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile, but it wasn't a happy one. Not at all. "Of what?" he echoed.

"Of losing you the way I lost Han. Of losing the Alliance the way I lost Alderaan. Of losing… _everything_ again." Her voice shook with sobs, and then she wasn't holding his hand; he was holding hers, and gripped it tightly, her lifeline. "I'm so, so scared, all the time—I didn't want to admit to Han that I loved him because I was scared of losing him, again. Opening up. No one's been there for me as much as you, Han, Chewie and the droids have been. Not in years and definitely not since… since Alderaan.

"I'm scared of losing this war. I'm scared of seeing Vader again"—Luke flinched—"and scared that one day I'll be marched in front of the Emperor to be executed while he laughs. And I'm scared of losing you.

"But I have to go on. The Alliance needs me to—and you boys need me to. So I do. I stay afraid," she let out a shaky breath, "but I do it anyway."

"Stay afraid," Luke echoed, "but do it anyway."

"Those woods terrify me too," she admitted. "On a primal level I can't even begin to understand. But Fett might be in there. _Han_ might be in there. So we'll have to stay afraid…"

"…but we'll do it anyway," Luke repeated.

Leia let out a breath.

"I think that's what bravery is."

They lay together for a few minutes, holding hands in the night. Then Leia rolled towards him.

"Sometimes bravery needs a little help though. For both of us." She held out an arm. "Can I have a hug?"

Luke smiled down at her, and kissed her hair. "Of course."

They hugged— _tightly_ , like they truly were the brother and sister they'd pretended to be—and Luke found he could finally fall asleep like that.

He found that he could beat the fears creeping on him like plants around a decaying house—so long as he knew that he was not alone.


	2. Day 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vader shows up to ruin everyone's day and in the woods, Luke and Leia come across something that leaves them unsettled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a quick heads up: the latter scene in this chapter has an unpleasant line or two describing bugs in an icky way; I thought I'd forewarn for that.
> 
> Many thanks once again to [zoryany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoryany/pseuds/zoryany) for betaing!

Luke woke up the next morning having slept surprisingly well—the darkness had retreated from them during the night, and he was left free, trailing the remains like cobwebs glistening in the light, unbound by them.

He stood up to open the window of the room, and took in a deep breath of fresh, morning air, enjoying the silence.

Leia, still curled up in the bed, peeled her eyes open to observe him. "There's no birdsong," she observed.

"What?"

"This planet—its climate and ecosystems are perfect for birds. There were even ravens embellished on the door to that tavern yesterday. Why is there no birdsong?"

Luke thought about it for a moment—then decided he didn't want to think about it anymore.

He closed the window quickly. "Perhaps they're sleeping in."

Leia snorted.

They got changed quickly, each taking turns to use the bathroom, then Luke was just shrugging on his poncho and slinging his pack over his shoulder when Leia asked, "So, to be clear, what's our plan? Find Martha's sister, rent the speeder, then head into the woods?"

"Yeah." He nodded—aware that this was not a question, but Leia laying it out for him. "Find someone who's willing to guide us, if possible—those woods look thick and it's a bad idea to navigate them too ambitiously without someone who knows the terrain—but if not, just take the speeder in, stick to the paths that the speeder _can_ take and explore from there. Then, retrace our steps to get back here."

Leia nodded, approving. "Good. If Fett took Han all the way out there, he certainly wasn't transporting that carbonite slab without a speeder—we should be fine." She strapped her wrist-mounted comlink to her forearm and gave a sharp grin.

"Ready to go?"

Another prickle of apprehension consumed the back of Luke's neck, drowning out Leia's smile for a moment—he turned his head slightly to peer out the window, staring down at the trees that loomed far too sinister for his liking.

He hadn't even known trees _could_ seem sinister. They always seemed perfectly benign—miraculous, even, to the resident desert boy—before.

But he shook himself, and smiled at Leia.

 _Stay afraid_ , she'd said, _and do it anyway_.

It was natural to fear—for all that Yoda had preached about its dangers, he had also preached about the _reason_ it was so pervasive. It was present in everyone. It was natural. It was a survival tactic.

The trick was making as its master.

When fear arrived, as Uncle Owen used to say, it meant that so had the Sand People. Or the storms. Or Jabba's men. It meant it was time to fight, or to flee—it was time to _survive_.

This time, with Leia on his side, it was time to fight.

"Yeah," he said, taking a deep breath. The insects swarming his stomach, chittering up and down his guts like they were their own personal hive, stilled at his calm, hissing in an irritated tone. "Let's go."

* * *

There had apparently been some unrest overnight—Luke balked when he saw how many troopers were swarming the streets, moving up and down. He found himself glad for the hood of the poncho, and the colour, which seemed to blend into the drab walls; Leia's hairstyle thankfully also seemed to throw off recognition. They made it through the first few swarms, down a few streets and around a few corners as Martha had directed them, and then there was the business: a rundown shop, a swinging metal sign, and a neat _13_ embellished on the chipped green paint of the door.

Leia pushed right in; Luke jumped at the bell that rang when she shoved the door open. A woman behind the counter, with Martha's fizzy brown hair and strong nose, jerked her head up and grinned at them. "I assume you're the siblings who wanna rent a speeder?"

"Yes please," Leia said, smiling dazzlingly. "We're going into the woods."

"I heard." She sounded amused. "That'll be you practically buying a speeder, then—look around at some of the prices."

Luke reached out to squint at one of them, written on a placard next to a miniature of the speeder model, then grimaced. "Not sure we can afford that," he glanced up at Leia, panicked for a moment, before remembering the alias she'd given herself in the tavern, "Josie."

"I'm sure we can come to an arrangement," Leia said, smiling at the shopkeeper—what was her name again, Molly?—but Molly just snorted.

"See if you can find one you like that's in your budget," she said.

"We also wanted to ask if you know somewhere that we could hire a guide to take us in—"

"Tourists are insane," she said. "No one's going to come in with you. You'll die in the woods. I know everyone has already said this to you, so there's nothing I can do to stop you, but that's that. And even if you get lucky—you do have something of the…" She eyed Luke. "… _woodish_ feel to you that the ladies always carried—you'll not make it back with the speeder. And you won't make it back as good as you are now. No one wants to come in with you. Take the hint."

Luke sighed.

"The T-14 is a good model," he murmured to Leia. "Old, so cheap, but similar enough to a T-16 or an X-wing that I know how to fly it well and a solid make. Not fast, but not likely to fall apart."

"I knew I brought you along for a reason, flyboy," she joked back. He smiled.

"We'll take the T-14."

"So you do have a couple of brain cells between you," Molly observed, and took the credits eagerly. "Let's see how they look once the Ghosts rot them in your head."

* * *

Luke was shivering to himself, trying to fight back the cold—which inconveniently seemed to _double_ in oppressiveness and familiarity today—when they stepped outside again and glanced around.

"Even more Imps," Luke muttered to Leia. "Are they—"

"Just leave them be. Keep your head down. Laugh like I just said a joke." Leia's composure was iron-clad; Luke was jealous.

Still. He followed her instructions, and laughed. He really didn't like the way the leader of the nearest squad of troopers snapped their head around to stare them down at the sound—they… didn't look like a normal trooper, either; they wore an blue pauldron and had an insignia stamped on their armour that looked uncomfortably familiar—but he just kept laughing, and kept moving.

Molly had sent them to where she kept all her speeders in the garage at the back of the shop, so they turned a corner and stepped onto the duracrete platform with all the models side by side. For a moment, he was tempted to get distracted and ogle some of the more beautiful ones—they were so lovely for an Outer Rim planet like this!—but he kept his focus and kept going. It was hard not to feel on edge, when he could still feel those troopers' gazes on them.

"Thirteen C, was the space," Leia said lightly, pitching her voice higher than usual, her grip around the ignition keys so tight her knuckles were white ridges. "Thirteen C, thirteen C…"

"There." Luke pointed, and they headed over.

On the way, Luke made the mistake of glancing over his shoulder at the troopers.

The leader of the squad was staring right at him.

And the rest were fanned out to block off the landing pad.

And just as Leia unlocked the speeder, climbing into the passenger's seat, the leader hefted his blaster and declared, "Surrender, Rebel scum, and you will not be harmed."

Luke froze.

Leia did too, eyeing the controls like she was about to start shooting them out of there as best she could, immediately.

 _"Will not be harmed?_ " she whispered. "Is that what they're selling now?"

"Skywalker and Organa. You will surrender to us, or we will start shooting."

Luke closed his eyes and winced.

Then he opened him again—they were no use closed.

They'd been recognised.

They'd probably been recognised as early as in the tavern yesterday, after all.

 _Why_ was his luck this bad?

Luke made his decision—he slid into the pilot's seat of the speeder so fast that he barely knew what his hands were doing, and rested them on the controls.

"Skywalker!" the commander barked. Luke ignored him—he knew the bounty on him was alive and unharmed, he knew why, he knew what Vader wanted to do to him— _"Put your hands where I can see them, and surrender!"_

Luke’s nerves were at fraying point, the cold creeping up his spine to coil around his neck like a brace, and then—

A shadow fell.

It fell across the whole valley. Luke looked up, and saw it.

A dagger-shaped ship in the sky.

The sun glinting around it, behind it, like a halo, blinding him; even then, he knew what this was. He knew what that ship—that massive, massive ship, that Super Star Destroyer—had to be.

He knew _who_ it was.

He knew he was already on his way.

 _Surrender, my son._ This time, the cold was not in his back, and the voice was not in his imagination. It was all, it was _everywhere_ , and Luke wanted to curl into a ball and cry to get away from it. _There is no escape._

Luke reached for the controls.

"How good are you with two blasters?" he asked Leia.

"Pretty damn good."

Then he started the engine, she grabbed his blaster and hers off their belts, and they both gave it a shot.

* * *

The commander was clearly excellent at his job—he was a trooper from the _Executor_ , not one of the local ones—but even he couldn't stop a speeder barrelling straight for him. When Luke yanked on the Force to toss him aside, he flew into the fence like a ragdoll.

The troopers around them opened fire.

 _"Careful!"_ Luke heard one of them shout. _"Lord Vader wants them—alive—agh!"_

"Nice shot," he shouted to Leia as he yanked the control to the side and shot around the bend, onto the poorly-paved road lined in shops.

Poorly-paved, perhaps—but leagues better than Tatooine.

Leia didn't bother answering; she knew she was a good shot. She just tossed him a wicked grin and then nailed a trooper in the groin.

Then she groaned. "Troopers in speeder bikes coming up on the left."

 _Kriff._ Bikes were smaller and faster than speeders, much more manoeuvrable, and it wasn't like they'd chosen this model for its speed in the first place. If the troopers managed to catch up with them, or disable them—

"Can you try to outrun them?"

"I can _try_."

_Do, or do not. There is no try._

Luke gritted his teeth. He revved the engine and they shot forward so fast he could feel the heat leaping under his fingertips.

But the troopers on either side kept pace with them anyway, and _more were coming_. He could sense them, gathering like flocks of white, armoured birds, hear the revs of their engines, the whirr as the bikes leapt into the air and scorched the paving slabs between them—

One of the bike troopers was neck in neck with them now; Luke exchanged curt, terrified glances with him, watched him lift a blaster to shoot, and—

In a moment of panic, the Force bunched around him just enough to toss the blaster from his hand.

It misfired as it spun; a curb of grass turned to smouldering mush.

Instead of giving up, the trooper did nothing of the sort; he stayed neck in neck with them, drove the speeder bike into the speeder's side multiple times— _stars, we've had this less than five minutes and we're already not going to get the deposit back on it_ —and tried to knock them off course. Luke locked them in, panting, heart lurching as he saw the trooper make to jump across to Leia's side, reaching for her and her blasters.

Luke yanked the speeder in a sharp turn to the right at just the right moment.

The jump failed. The trooper hit the dirt, went rolling—and there was a _crack_ , and an emptiness in the Force, and Luke knew _exactly_ what that meant. He couldn't dwell on it too much, though; he'd yanked them off the residential road, onto the road down the hill, and now it was winding, winding, winding, left—right—left—right—left—

With the trooper out the way he tried to calm down, tried to focus on the turns—these were easier than Beggar's Canyon! But he panicked, looking around every which way for the next pursuer; most were at a safe distance. That was good. The nearest were the 501st squad with their leader, gaining on them but still about thirty metres away; he could feel their _glares_ from here.

They weren't glaring at him.

They were glaring at Leia.

He took a moment to glance up at her and _smile_ , genuinely. She was up on her knees on the seat, ducking and dodging as the bolts—stun bolts, green ones; so they didn't want to kill either of them just yet, or at least they didn't want to kill Luke and didn't trust he wouldn't be caught in the crossfire—spinning a blaster in each hand with deadly precision. She flicked her eyes to the side, whipped her right arm to follow, and crashed one speeder bike; both blasters came round to train on another, sending them up in flames and careening into the next over, then the next over, then the next over…

"Leia," Luke said, "you're amazing—"

She laughed—and ducked to _barely_ avoid a vicious, _kill_ shot, past her head. Luke widened his eyes at the hairs blackened and crumpled with the heat of it, flashed his head around—

The leader was gaining on them.

Leia's face twisted in a snarl of determination and Luke set his jaw to match it, glancing at the readouts of the speeder again. They could keep going. They could keep going, they could go faster…

He flicked switches, shoved his foot on the acceleration, felt the metal shudder under his grip like it was ready to disintegrate in his very hands—

— _no don't do this to me not now not here—_

—and he hissed a breath out between his teeth, taking some of the pressure off. They zipped forwards still, but they couldn't go faster, _surely_ they could go faster…

Leia fired at the leader, her left blaster still trained on one of his underlings sneaking around from the side. She hit the underling's shoulder, punching him clean off the bike and to the hard ground below him.

She missed the leader. First shot—too high. Second shot—he ducked. Third shot—

Third shot went wide as Luke swerved around the next corner, down the hill, and winced as he heard the bikes grind to a quick halt directly above him. Shots showered down—he _closed his eyes_ as he tried to avoid them, the Force shrieking in his ear and lighting them up like neon rain—then orders barked, and bikes groaned and _leapt_ down, skidding on the sheer grassy slope for a moment.

Only a moment.

A moment later, he sensed with satisfaction as he rounded the next swerve, the roads becoming longer and curves less tight as they went down, down, down, they missed hitting the road properly and _crunched_. A few caught fire with Leia's strategic shots. Two troopers scrambled to their feet again, kicking the bikes back into action and pushing again, but Luke and Leia had a head start now and he was starting to relax into the motions of flying, every turn as natural as breathing—

Leia shot another volley of warning shots—no real aim, but they fanned out in a crimson arc like fireworks, and a few clipped the edges of the bikes. One must've been more damaged by the fall than the trooper thought; it blew like an overboiled womprat, while the other absorbed the impact and kept flying, bearing down on them.

Then it fell back.

Leia shot at it, but it was out of range now; she turned to shoot at the leader but he fell back as well. Stopped, outright, peering down at them as they turned, and turned, and turned, the gushing and rushing of the waterfall coming sharply up on their right.

Then the gushing wasn't all they could hear.

A shadow fell over them; Luke looked up to see a lambda shuttle descending with broad wings to land on the landing pad, feeling the cold engulf and envelop him the moment Vader reached out. He shivered, and yelped as the speeder shuddered in response, gripping the controls so tightly as they made another tight turn that his knuckles were sore and white.

 _Cease your foolish resistance_.

The speeder screeched as Luke tried to push it farther, faster, the trembling returning with a brute force. Leia tossed him a look, turning to sit back in the speeder properly, and buckle herself in.

"Are you alright!?" she shouted over the roar, her two plaits whipping behind her with a vicious ferocity. She held the blasters tightly, ready to fire, even as the troopers she could fire at turned to white spots above, then glinting lights in the glare of the sun, then were eclipsed by the hill and the road. "What's—"

 _Luke_.

He bent over double. The speeder lurched, nearly veering right off the path and plummeting into—

Into the falls.

The road ran next to the falls, here, and Luke _could not let them fall_.

_Come with me._

"I—" he got out, then _groaned_ as they both heard the deafening scree of TIEs, tipped out of the belly of the Destroyer far above and rising like smoke from the base closer above. "I can't— I can hear—"

_It is your destiny._

Green fire churned the road ahead of them to dust and ruts; Luke gritted his teeth and soared up the green bank, even as fire scoured the road behind them as well. No going back, no going forwards; he had to go sideways.

It was a much shorter distance, as the aiwha flew, anyway.

"Luke, what are you—"

But Leia understood the dilemma.

That didn't stop her from screaming as they tipped over the side of the mountain and started falling more than flying.

_Luke, WHAT ARE YOU DOING—_

_I will not come with you,_ Luke snarled back at him.

They were falling. They were falling. They tilted forwards and he used the Force to drag them back; they tilted backwards and he yanked just as hard, he grabbed the controls and tried to turn, yanking it round—

The repulsors found some footing again, and he _clung_ to it, feeling and leaning into every tiniest ridge and bump, breathing slowed to a pace almost dangerous as the world expanded until it was nothing but him, the speeder—

Him, the speeder, and Leia, as she followed his lead and leaned with every bump as well.

He didn't have much time to marvel at that. They reached a stretch of unscoured road and hit it; the sudden _boost_ the engines had plastered him to his seat and he grinned, a little maniacally.

Leia certainly looked at him like he was crazy.

They were nearly at the bottom of the hill. The falls on their right hit the basin a few curves above them, winding and tumbling in a wider, smoother river and curving round to hug the base of the hill like two lovers. A footbridge crossed it, as well as a wider bridge meant for traffic—

Before his eyes, the TIEs blew that to smithereens.

He gritted his teeth, leaning into the last turn, watching the road level out and shoot over the ruined bridge like a slingshot. The footbridge was right beside it, he could perform some fancy manoeuvring if he was desperate and just squeeze them onto that, it was _barely_ wide enough—

Then the TIEs shattered on that bridge, and it caught fire. Luke could hear the crackling, smell the smoke, from here.

_If they tracked the droids to the Jawas then that could lead them back—home—_

_No_. Luke shook it off, pushed the smell away, narrowed his eyes for all that they were streaming with tears.

He needed to get over that river.

The forest began almost immediately on the other side of its banks, right in front of them. It still stirred a primal fear in him, it still reached out to him and threatened to take him to pieces as it carved every inch of light and good and happiness out of him, it still felt like everything he wanted to avoid.

But Vader was behind them.

And Vader _was_ everything he wanted to avoid.

And at this point, at these speeds, they wouldn't be able to stop very easily. If Vader was willing to destroy the bridges, that meant he was probably willing to kill them.

But he hadn't destroyed them as thoroughly as he'd thought.

"Luke," Leia hissed. "Luke, tell me you're not—"

"We can make it," he insisted. "Trust me—and Vader is here. We have to make it."

The centre of the bridges was destroyed, but the edges were still intact.

The edges could be used as a ramp.

Leia's eyes bulged. " _Vader_ is here?"

"Yes," Luke said. "He's here."

She gripped the side of the speeder and squared her jaw. The look in her eyes could have frozen armies in their tracks.

"Then let's do this."

She tossed him a look that could have _launched_ armies on their tracks.

"I trust you."

He just hoped he was worthy of it.

He could feel a coldness behind him, growing larger and colder with every passing minute; the screeching of the TIEs gave way to the screeching of one in particular, and he _knew_ , intrinsically, who it was.

It landed behind them. He didn't pay attention. Everything in him, all of his power and intelligence and might, was focused on one speeder, one bridge, and the bank opposite.

Thirty metres to go.

_Young one…_

Twenty metres to go.

_You are a fool. You cannot—_

Ten.

And then they were there.

Time seemed to slow.

Luke punched everything he could, yanking it as high and as far as possible, the engine straining and spluttering on him; he laced everything he knew, every inch of his being into this one overpriced tin can, holding it together by sheer force of will—

He didn't realise he had closed his eyes until they were yanked to a stop.

No.

_No._

His eyes blew open again; he whipped his head around to stare. There, on the bank above them, with his TIE Advanced a gleaming shadow beside him and his cape waving like a planted flag, stood Vader—

— _his father—_

—with his hand raised, fist clenched.

The metal of the speeder squealed as it was dragged back.

"No," Luke said. "No!"

"Luke…" Leia said, glaring back at Vader. She fired a few shots up at him, but he was too far up, he had the high ground, he was out of range—

_Let. Me. Go._

_You cannot run from your destiny, son._

Luke flicked as many switches as he could, tried to give it more power, but it shuddered and splintered and screamed.

_You will be coming with me. If you do not want the Princess to die for your cowardice and folly, you will do as I say._

Cowardice.

Folly.

Rage welled up inside him and he let it spill out, untouched—because it was true. He was a coward for running from all of this, for avoiding the forest when it was going to save Luke from _him_ ; he was a fool for having fallen for any of Vader's tricks or traps on Bespin, for having hoped his father didn't want him dead…

For still being tempted to go with him, even now.

But Luke was a coward and a fool, so he wouldn't do as his father asked.

Instead, he wrapped the Force around him and let it _explode_.

The shockwave shattered with all his fear, panic, anger—it flattened the first trees of the forest, collided with the river until water exploded up to slap his and Leia's faces, drenching them.

And it threw Vader backwards, breaking his concentration.

The speeder shot loose like an ancient cannonball.

They hit the edge of the ruined bridge; it crumpled underneath them, but the overflowing river shoved them forward anyway, spinning insanely, until Luke wrestled back control just in time to hear Vader _roar_ over the bond he didn't want.

The forest was dark, forbidding, and deep. It made him queasy the moment he crossed inside.

But with its trees too thick for TIEs and the river too wide for speeder bikes, its dark arms welcomed them nonetheless.

* * *

"What," Leia asked, as they slowed to a crawl after forty minutes of silent, aimless, _rash_ flying through a vague forest path, "the _kriff_ was that?"

Luke, still trapped in his own mind, cast her a look. "You're going to have to be more specific."

"You threw back Vader," she said quietly. "I knew you were getting more powerful—"

"I'm not. That was just— that was just a trick. I'm good at escaping"—they rounded a bend, still going fairly quickly, and flicked on the speeder's headlights; the light was getting dimmer the farther they headed into the forest—"but I can't beat him."

"Well, you won this round."

"After throwing us down a hill and nearly killing us by trying to fly over a river?"

"I meant what I said," Leia told him. "I trust you. You knew what you were doing."

"I had _no idea_ what I was doing."

"But you did it. You wouldn't have done it if you hadn't known there was a chance you could do it."

Luke ignored her. He didn't want to think about it right now. She… she was wrong, that was sheer luck that had seen them survive—

_In my experience, there's no such thing as luck._

Han had scoffed at Ben's words.

Luke gritted his teeth and wished he could believe them.

"Anyway," he said. "We— we escaped."

Leia nodded. "Yes. They'll be looking for us, but they have to go back and get the speeders first, and the other transports."

"Bigger transports than a speeder won't fit in here." Luke glanced around—there were a thousand deer paths through the woods, and they were winding along one, with the main road a few klicks to their left. Out of sight, and even out of sense, as the darkness around them engulfed all Force presences that weren't right beside him.

Even Leia, who'd shone so brightly above Bespin for some reason, was quieter in the Force than usual.

"They'll have speeders on the main roads, then… speeder bikes will be faster and more agile than us, better for a forest terrain; they'll use those. With the speeder leaving heat tracks and"—he glanced behind them at the repulsor-flattened grass and snapped twigs in their wake—"a full trail, they'll be able to track us quite easily."

"Then soon we'll have to ditch the speeder and go on foot," Leia said.

"We don't know how far Fett's cottage in the woods will be."

"It can't be too far."

"Did you _see_ the size of this forest?"

"You've never been lost before, Luke," she said confidently. "I trust you'll be able to do it."

That was good.

Because Luke didn't.

"Which way should we be heading, then?" Leia continued. "So we know the general direction, even if we have to take a less direct path there if the troopers find us."

Luke paused. The speeder paused moving forwards as well.

He squinted ahead through the trees, hanging with vines and leaves and a thick mesh of criss-crossing branches; through the undergrowth, dense and twisted and gnarled underfoot; through the canopy above, made of layers on layers of leaves that knotted to form a shield from the skies and the stars.

And the starfighters that were no doubt scanning the area.

They couldn't scan for lifeforms; everything here was a lifeform. They'd be scanning for heat, for metal parts.

They needed to ditch the speeder.

But first, they needed to know where they were going.

"I have no idea," he said.

Leia frowned. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Luke, we need—"

"I _know_ what we need. I'm not a navigational system, Leia. I just get feelings, sometimes, and sometimes they help, but this place"—he waved his hand—"is full of _bad_ feelings and now the bad is all I can feel!"

Leia sighed. "I… understand."

"Do you?"

"I do," she fired back. "I always used to feel like that when I went to Imperial Centre and had to sit in the Senate."

He blinked at her.

"You could _feel_ the darkness. It was everywhere. On— on _Alderaan_ , it was light, and I could tell whenever someone lied, I could tell if something was off, I felt more capable and powerful. I could handle _anything_ on Alderaan—even when I went to other planets, I could handle anything. But Imperial Centre… Everything changed when I was there. It was horrible."

"But away from Imperial Centre," he turned to her and smiled, nudging her with his arm, "you _can_ do anything."

"No, I can't."

"You saved our lives up there. Your shooting… we would've been caught—"

"My shooting was good. But I was thrown. All of us were. I couldn't shoot enough of them, and when Vader stood there, ready to hurt us both, _again_ , I could do _nothing_."

"That was a moment of panic, Leia. You didn't have _time_ to do anything."

"You did."

"What I did was also a moment of panic. You took the moment to think, instead of acting in a way that could've killed us faster than it saved us. I know that with a few more moments you'd have come up with something better."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that."

"I would."

She looked him in the eye. "I couldn't save Alderaan," she said. "I couldn't save Han." She took his elbow, slid her hands down it, and grasped his prosthetic hand. "I couldn't save you."

"You did—"

"Not in time." She swallowed. "Where do we go from here?"

He didn't know how to respond to that.

Leia was usually the one with the orders, who knew what to do. What was he supposed to do when he took the lead?

Channel General Organa the best he could, he supposed, even if Leia couldn't do it herself.

"The only way we can, I guess…" He looked around one last time, and froze.

Leia frowned. "What was that? Which way?"

"What's that?"

Something in the trees, just out of his line of sight.

They exchanged a look.

Then he seized the controls and flew towards it, shadows flickering strangely, _humanoid_ shadows, leering out at him…

"What," Leia said, climbing out of the speeder before he'd even stopped it again, "is _that_."

Luke had no idea. He brought the speeder to a halt and followed her, creeping forwards, because that was humanoid, _that was humanoid…_

But it wasn't moving at all.

After a moment, Leia laughed.

Luke frowned. "What—"

"Look at it." Leia stepped right forwards, and as she did she stepped into a shaft of light that snuck through the canopy, lighting the dust in the air around her and glinting off her brown hair. She raised a pale hand to gesture to the figure—gesture Luke forward. "Look."

Luke looked.

It wasn't just humanoid—it was human. But it wasn't… alive; now, here, right next to it in the Force, he could sense that acutely. It was even deader than a corpse—it had never been alive at all.

It was a statue.

A terrifyingly good statue. The man's face was twisted in horror, his mouth open in a silent scream—the skin looked supple enough to be genuinely soft, the wrinkles on his face carved and creased with immense precisions. His hair almost seemed to blow in the nonexistent breeze.

He stood there rigid, ivy and small trees entwining his legs as they grew up around him, constricting his hips, his chest; just looking at some of the plants that had found a home in the mouth made Luke want to gag.

It was a phenomenal statue.

Eerily good.

Because the statue may not register in the Force—may be an inanimate object—but the area was… darker than usual.

Despite the white light that shone down on them all, Luke felt so, so cold.

"Who made this?" he whispered. The utter terror in that face unsettled him on a visceral level. "Why would they want to—"

"There's more."

Luke turned his head to see where Leia was pointing, and sure enough, there were. He approached them gently, even as Leia jogged over in a quiet awe to stare.

"It's a bit… distasteful," she said, eyeing the expression. This one was a woman, her hair knotted in a perfect bun behind her hand; instead of having her mouth open mid-scream, the artist had depicted her gritting her jaw so hard Luke half expected the stone to shatter, and her eyes were wide. Her chest was hitched high, caught in an eternal gasp. "But the detail is… perfect."

Luke shot her a look. "Yeah. I guess it's… _good art_."

"What do you think the artist's intentions were?" Leia wondered, circling the statue. "The nature of fear?"

"Fear is quieter than that," Luke said, staring into the screaming man's eyes. They were blue—perfectly, realistically coloured. "It's not always so loud."

"No," Leia agreed. "But it's always desperate." She jerked her head. "And there's more."

A man weeping, bent over double, halfway to throwing his hands over his eyes.

A child, brow furrowed, face ready to crumple, tiny hand crushed in a fist.

An older person, their face heavily wrinkled with laugh lines, facing that fear with a quiet bravery that Luke found himself viciously, vividly envying.

"They're amazing," Leia said. She went to touch the shoulder of one. "They're—"

She froze.

Her fingers constricted on the shoulder. As they brushed cloth, it indented. Shifted. Moved like fabric should.

Leia snatched her hand back like she'd been scalded.

Then she swallowed and reached out to touch the cloth again. Perhaps the artist had just put real clothing over their statue. Perhaps there was a reasonable explanation for this. Perhaps—

Then Leia touched her fingers to the statue's cheek, so lightly they were barely there. The stone gave way like flesh, soft and squishy.

"They're real," she said.

The words fell like knells in the silences of the glade. Luke had no idea how to react, so he didn't react at all for several seconds. Leia stayed staring at them, disgust slowly consuming her face, but her fingers still lingering on the cheek—

Then she jerked them away, white as a sheet, and stumbled back.

"What the _kriff_ ," she seethed. "What the actual—"

Luke caught her before she tripped on the undergrowth. "Those can't be real," he said. "They— they don't feel like corpses. Even corpses are connected to the Force, to life. This… this feels like the _antithesis_ of life."

"What does that mean?"

"They're black holes, Leia," he said. "This whole forest is, but these… if they were human once…"

"They must have been." A breeze was starting to stir. Leia was staring at the woman's hair now; it was a perfect bun, but even then a few strands were escaping, more and more, and they seemed to wave in the leisurely air currents.

Before their eyes, a bug crawled out of the woman's nostril and Leia flinched.

Luke asked, "What is this?"

"It's _sick_ , that's what—"

"I haven't heard of anything like this." He tried examining them with the Force again, but this time— he tried to access the darkness but it _shrieked_ , around him, and when he fumbled for the statues he felt only the living cage of the plants that had seized them.

There was nothing in the humans beyond flesh and plant food.

"We need to go," he said. "Get back to the speeder."

Leia didn't argue. Luke didn't think he'd ever walked so fast.

_Cowardice._

_Folly._

He was not fool enough to stay here and wait for whatever had happened to those people to happen to them.

The moment they turned their backs on the statues, they felt like they were being watched; Luke fought back a shiver, and Leia grabbed for his hand. He squeezed it tightly.

They traipsed through the undergrowth, one foot in front of another, one foot in front of another…

Then scrambled into the speeder. Luke nearly took Leia's foot off when he shot off without warning, and she narrowly yanked it inside before it was taken out by a tree.

"We still don't know where to go," Leia hissed to him, clinging to her plaits as they streamed behind her, face still paper pale.

Luke took a deep breath.

Vader was outside the woods. To leave would be to deliver themselves to his clutches.

And yet, he couldn't shake the feeling that whatever was inside the woods was unaccountably _worse_.

"It doesn't matter. We have to keep going," he said, voice choking up a little. "Like you said. For Han. We have to keep going, in the only way we can go."

Because he was _not_ going back.

Not to the glade of statues.

Not to Falcou.

Not to his father's clutches.

"Onward."

* * *

It was several hours later that night fell, and they found a nice clearing in which to make camp—a clearing Luke was fairly sure they'd flown past twice already, but he wasn't going to comment on it. It was getting darker and darker, until it was nearly pitch black, and Luke could sense Leia nodding off in her seat behind him.

He was struggling to stay awake himself, despite the low-level, jagged fear that scratched at his insides with every passing moment. This glade they'd found actually opened out onto the stars, so it felt not quite so… stifling… and while Luke knew that there might be a threat of searching TIEs flying overhead and spotting them, lying there, he found he didn't care.

So long as he could see the stars.

It was a cloudless night, and they were laid out in front of him like a mass of spilled glitter, three of Venaira's satellites hiding a few with their light, like little halos. In the distance he could even see the uninhabitable gas giant this system held, a pale blue smudge behind a moon.

It was cold, so he swaddled in his clothes and huddled next to Leia as they made a bed on the grass; apparently Molly had forgotten to take her own blanket out of the back of the speeder before selling it to them. They had their own packs and blankets as well, so they'd be fine—but when Luke turned his head towards Leia, there was a silver tear sliding down her cheek, glistening in the starlight.

"What is it?" he asked in a hushed tone.

She pointed to a tiny, faint star in a formation that looked like a lightsaber with a crossguard, the small star making up the centre.

"That's Alderaan's star," she said.

Luke swallowed.

Leia laughed bitterly. "The star's still there, even after everything. The Death Star may have killed a planet, but not even they could kill a sun."

She was silent for a moment, taking in a deep breath.

"But then if I used a telescope, or looked with any sort of magnification," she whispered, "I wouldn't be able to see Alderaan's shadow on it. I used to do that—I'd visit Gatalenta, or Naboo, or wherever I'd been sent, and sometimes I would stargaze and look for the little blue dot that was home. But if I got out a telescope now…"

"You'd see nothing but dust." Luke's throat was dry. He imagined what he'd see if _he_ were to go home—if he had to go home, in order to rescue Han, because Fett had made it back to Jabba with him—and didn't like to think about the farm his aunt and uncle and great-uncle and all his family had put so many years of work into lying stripped, looted, and burnt.

The sands would've taken it by now. Bare and barren, the Tuskens there to claim it.

"No." Leia shook her head. "Actually… we're too far away. The light from the explosion hasn't reached this planet yet." Another tear slid down her cheek. "If I looked at Alderaan from here, I'd still see home—and I'd know I would never be able to go back."

Luke rolled over to hug her. She buried her face in his chest. "We can't go home," he whispered, the tragedy of it overtaking him. "We can't ever go back."

"It's as you said," she hiccupped. "There's only one way we can go—onwards. And although the past shouldn't matter, if that's all we're trying to do… _It does._ "

She grasped his hand when he offered it.

 _"Stars_ , it does."

Luke took a moment to think about home—about Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, and the happy, yearning ignorance that was being the son of a dead spice smuggler. They'd tried so hard to protect him.

And now here he was.

The haunted son of a Sith Lord, instead.

Vader, Obi-Wan, and everyone else had always gone on about destiny. He didn't know about destiny. He didn't know where he was going. All he knew was that he was _lost_.

"It really does," he agreed, and somehow they both found sleep that night.


	3. Day 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke and Leia encounter a strange woman, a monster, and then a cottage in the woods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thank yous to [zoryany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoryany/pseuds/zoryany) once again for betaing! And also indulging my love of italics, hehe.

Luke awoke to something bouncing off his head.

He looked up to see Leia eyeing him, eyeing the speeder, and grabbing ration bars out of the pack they'd kept in the back. A glance down revealed the offending bar that had hit him.

"Get up," she said. "Sun's up and the Imps will be too." She bit into her ration bar and did an admirable job of pretending it had any taste at all.

Luke sighed and sat up, reaching for his own bar. "How much food do we have left?"

Leia finished chewing, swallowing neatly, before she answered. "A couple of ration bars. We can't wander around for much longer—we have to go out to get food at some point."

Luke, in contrast, spoke with a mouth full of his crumbling bar. "Then we'll have to restock soon—maybe we can steal some food from Fett when we find him."

"Only one problem with that." Leia raised an eyebrow. "We're lost."

"I noticed."

Leia shot him a look. "We can't just keep driving when we're _lost_."

"I think that's the only thing we _can_ do."

"Luke." Her tone was level. Her cheeks had regained their colour with every klick they put between themselves and those statues last night—he could relate to that—and the sleep had clearly done her a world of good. Her eyes were filled with that familiar fire again. "We have a limited amount of fuel, and we already blew a lot of it on escaping Vader. We can't—"

There was a shriek in the distance and she cut herself off. "What was that!?"

"I don't know."

"It sounded like—"

"It was a bird," Luke decided. "I sensed it."

Leia tossed him a look that said she knew _full well_ the Force had not told him it was a bird, but she pressed, "We can't keep flying in circles. Yesterday we passed the fallen tree trunk that looks like a crown three times." She pointed at one on the edge of the glade.

Luke examined it. "I think it looks more like an X-wing."

"Oh, of course you would think that, flyboy, I—" She took a deep breath. Buried her face in her hands. Then she let out a huff of laughter at the joke he'd intended to make. "At least if I'm lost in some dark, cursed woods, I'm lost in some dark, cursed woods with _you._ "

The smile she gave him genuinely warmed his heart. "Likewise."

"But we still don't know where to go."

"No."

"We should have asked in Falcou if there was a map," she grumbled. "Why does no one ever ask for a—"

There was a loud snapping of twigs—a squawk that was too human to be avian.

" _That_ was not a bird!"

"No," Luke said, cringing back and rising to his feet simultaneously. "It wasn't."

She raised her head to look at whatever he'd seen.

It, too, was humanoid, and for a moment both of them tensed and reached for their blasters—was it one of those statues again? _Come to life?_

They raised the blasters, pointed them, and then—

Paused.

Luke lowered his again, though Leia kept hers high and ready. Because it wasn't a living statue shambling at them, it was…

A woman.

A woman with bronze hair, matted with moss and plants until it bloomed green. White and pink flowers nestled around her ears and her crown, but they were faint—dying. Her skin was sallow and clung to her skull like poor clothing; her hollow eyes were wide in her hollow face.

She wore a long green dress, or robe, of a thick material similar to the robes Ben had worn, and though her feet were bare, she didn't flinch at all as she strode forwards, snapping twigs and leaving a trail of blood on the thorns. Luke squinted at the blood—something seemed off about it—but dismissed it.

Rustling behind her, in the bushes, was… something. Luke squinted, utterly unsure what it was supposed to be, but couldn't distinguish whatever was following her from the undergrowth it traipsed through.

Luke lowered his blaster. "Who are you?" he called carefully, but—he hoped—amicably.

Leia shot him a glare. She was the diplomat of the two, so he supposed he should've left it to her, but he didn't think pointing a blaster at someone was particularly diplomatic, so he supposed they'd have to agree to disagree there…

Reaching out had got her attention, at least. Her gaze had been meandering around the glade, almost unseeing, but she whipped her head to stare at him at the sound of his voice, and Luke nearly flinched at the way her white eyes bulged from her face.

"Hello?" he said again, spreading his arms to show he was holding or hiding nothing. "Who are you? We're— we're not from around here, and we're trying to find a cottage in the woods here somewhere. I don't suppose you…"

The woman tilted her head; earth—and was that mould?—tipped out of her hair onto the berry bush she'd been examining. She opened her mouth and moved her lips quickly, rapidly; all that came out was a chittering noise that Luke hadn't known the human mouth could make.

"I… I'm sorry, I don't understand—"

Leia scoffed and stepped in front of Luke, holstering her blaster. "My name is Josie, and this is Abidan," she introduced, slowly and clearly, holding out a hand. When the woman continued to look at them in confusion and disdain—even shuffle away from them, or at least shuffle agitatedly in place—she switched languages.

She tried Huttese. Luke winced at her Core world accent. "What is your name? We are new here, and mean you no harm."

She tried Ryl. Nothing.

She tried Shyriiwook—or, at least an imitation of it. No response.

Luke sighed. Leia scowled in frustration, then turned back to her with a sweet smile.

Switching again to Basic, she took a few more steps forward and asked, "As my friend said, could you possibly give directions—"

Luke had a bad feeling about this the moment the woman _glared_ at Leia, as she stepped forwards, opening her mouth to reveal ivory teeth sharper than a human's should be.

Then she _screamed_.

It was the worst thing Luke had ever heard.

The Force of it physically knocked him back; he clapped his hands over his ears and collapsed onto his backside, head thumping into the dirt. Tears streamed from his eyes as his head _pounded_ , every inch of him vibrating at the tune of the scream, at a frequency _his body should not be vibrating at_ ; he felt like he was about to be shaken into oblivion, a thousand pieces left scattered across the forest floor for his father's diligent troopers to find…

The screaming stopped and he gasped, blinking desperately until he could see again. He yanked himself forwards onto his knees and stared ahead, trying to focus on the grass and the leaves and the blankets they'd laid out to sleep on…

His vision cleared and he glanced up, looking for Leia. The woman—or, he suspected bitterly, a _lady of the forest_ , if she could wield the Force with _that_ sort of efficacy—was glaring at him, and he saw Leia— poor Leia—

She was lying on the ground ahead of him, knocked clean out. Blood dribbled out of her left nostril to stain her upper lip.

The lady said something else in her chittering language; Luke looked towards those things that had been following behind her.

They… they came into the light of the glade, and he saw them.

Twigs.

Sticks.

Small trees, moving on legs, with too many limbs and appendages for him to count.

He glanced back at the lady, cut his gaze to Leia, to the twigs' threatening motions, and _threw himself to his feet_.

The moment he moved they were swarming towards him—the first hit him, bit him on the shoulder with a vicious force that left splinters in his flesh. The second struck him across the face, the third climbed onto his back—

He summoned the Force to him and _threw them_ , lighting up the darkness of this world like a supernova.

And immediately felt two intense presences latch onto him with a hunger that was almost palpable.

One of them, he recognised.

No.

No, he needed to _move_ before Vader pinpointed his location—

While the twigs were dazed he dashed forwards, seizing Leia around the torso, grabbing up as many blankets from underfoot as he could, and sprinting for the speeder. He was neither gentle nor efficient as he chucked them all into the speeder—Molly's spare blanket was left caught on a thornbush, but he couldn't run back into the pursuing twigs to _go get it_ —but he was _fast_ and that was what mattered. Leia groaned, and stirred, shadows gathering around her temple, brows, eyes.

He threw himself into the speeder and fired up the engine. They shot forwards like a blaster bolt; he yanked the controls and they narrowly avoided a tree.

There was another distant scream, too similar to that _awful_ one, but they weren't— they weren't in range, anymore, it seemed. He felt hot blood drip out of his ear, he felt his pounding headache pulse and intensify, but it didn't throw him back, and every metre he put between them and that lady—

Every one was a metre he had to win from the twigs. They were pursuing him with a ferocious speed, clinging to the back of the speeder, clinging to anything in there—he shouted when one twig seized the bag of ration bars in an attempt to cling on, taking them with it as it fell; that was _all their food_ —but there was nothing he could do but _keep flying_.

Duck around the tree.

Over the ditch.

Try to lose the twigs in the chase.

They pounded on the sides of the speeder, those with a solid grip clawing at any machinery they could get their hands on, ripping up the back, tearing out some of the repulsors and buckling the metal plates under their tiny fists. Luke took a deep breath and tried to summon the Force to throw them back, but it took too much concentration to fly at these speeds and they nearly crashed—

Shots. _Bang, bang, bang, bang!_ Luke tossed a glance sideways to see Leia awake again, face half drenched in blood and sweat and limned in grimness as she picked off each creature in flaming bolts, one by one by one.

"Good shot," he panted, narrowly ducking around another tree. Over a stream—a twig went _splash_ as it wailed and fell right into it.

There was one still hanging on. It climbed over the blankets, over the supplies and over the seat and _latched itself_ to Luke's head, chattering and spitting, constricting its thin fingers around his eyes and its arms around his neck—

"Hey!" He pressed his eyes shut against those thorny claws, but he couldn't _see_ ; the Force flashed in warning, he dodged a tree and turned slightly; it flashed again—

The smell of ozone, a flash of red and a loud, careful shot _right_ next to his ear. The wood caught fire but Leia grabbed it with her bare hands and chucked it off his head before it caught, watching the damp earth quench the flames to smoke.

"Is that it?" Leia panted. "Are we—"

"I think so." He didn't dare look behind him, and those twig… _things_ … were too difficult to discern amongst the other wildlife in the Force, but he trusted that she could see, and he trusted that they flew hard and fast. "We should keep going for a while though, make sure we've lost them, until…"

"Until what?"

He grimaced as the speeder groaned. And clanked. And clattered.

"We said we were gonna have to ditch the speeder to avoid scans," he said, wincing again as something _screeched_ , fell off, and hit a log underneath them. "Well, we'll have to make sure to ditch it before it falls apart on us completely."

* * *

It fell apart the moment they stopped, two hours later.

Luke powered it down when he heard the crunch. He scowled, and beat the console with his fist.

There was a whine, and the whole thing jerked; the repulsors stopped altogether and they dropped onto the ground.

"Ouch," Leia said, but clambered out dutifully. Luke grabbed the blankets and blasters, then followed suit.

He kicked the speeder.

It fell into multiple pieces.

"Molly really sold us a piece of junk."

"Worse than the _Falcon_?" Leia joked.

Luke smiled. "'Course not. Nothing is."

"Hear hear." She glanced around them—at the dense, thick shadows that lined the forest, the way it seemed to go on and on and on and on and on without end— "We'll have to keep going on foot, now. Shove all the blankets and rations into the packs and we'll split the load."

"No more rations," he said. "The twigs got them and tossed them."

She stared. _"No more rations?_ How could you—"

"I was trying! You were unconscious," he lowered his voice into teasing, making it clear he wasn't serious, "so you certainly could've been a lot more help, too."

Leia grimaced, and rubbed her head—her nose. It was still crusted with blood, though she'd tried to use Han's jacket as best she could to wipe it away. "Well, we're out of food, then."

"We can try to scavenge for berries. If not, once we find that cottage, we can hopefully steal food from there. We…" He swallowed. His words were optimistic; his tone was not. "We'll be fine."

She gave him a look as she shrugged her own pack onto her shoulders. "I'll take your word for it." She surveyed the trees. "Which way?"

Luke shouldered his bag, and gritted his teeth.

He still didn't know.

He still had _no idea._

But… Still. He… tried to reach out with the Force. Tried to sense what was going on, what was where, where they were…

"That way." He pointed somewhere roughly in front of them, slightly to the left. "It's… in that general direction."

He knew his doubts were in his voice.

He knew Leia could hear them.

They both knew this was the best estimate they were going to get.

"Alright, then," Leia sighed. "Let's go."

* * *

They had been walking for a while when Luke sensed it.

As they went, he'd been… casting out his senses. Trying to gauge where they were going, if they were headed off track. They didn't seem to be, at least so far as he could sense, his abilities tingling like stars on an X-wing's cockpit. He… didn't know. He couldn't tell. But he thought they were going the right way.

And he thought someone was following him.

He gritted his teeth, glancing sideways at Leia; she looked back with a tired smile, then furrowed her brow when she saw his tense expression. After a moment, she felt it too, it seemed, and… shivered. Glanced around, awkwardly.

"Don't," Luke whispered. The idea just rang danger bells in his mind, and he winced. "I… I don't think…"

"What is it?" she hissed. So she could feel it too: it was _near here_ , though he couldn't see it, didn't dare to see it, and it was looping them, stalking them— "What… what _is_ that?"

"I don't know," he replied. He kept his gaze fixed on the woods right in front of him, the trees suddenly friendly, inviting, in the face of…

What this was.

It could be good.

It could be good, he supposed.

But he had thought that about the lady; Leia had thought that about the statues, and he… had thought that about his father, a long time ago.

And he trusted the Force, if nothing else; the Force which was screaming warnings about whatever this was.

"What do we do?" Leia asked. "Does it know we're here?"

Luke breathed, "Yes."

"Is it after us?"

"After us?"

"Is it _following_ us?"

Luke hesitated, frowning, then glanced around. "Yes," he decided. "It is." He knew what it felt like to have such a heavy gaze focused on you, and _only_ you; whatever this thing was, it was definitely following them.

It was definitely _hunting_ them.

"We keep walking," Leia said. "We have to."

Luke let out a breath. "Yes," he said. "And besides. I don't think we really have much of a choice."

_You feel afraid, young one._

Luke gasped and tensed up, freezing where he stood. A twig snapped under his foot.

"Luke?" Leia reached for him worriedly. "What is it?"

_You need not be afraid. Come with me, and you will never feel fear again. We will rule the galaxy—_

Luke shook his head. "Echoes," he said. "It's nothing. We should keep moving."

A wind gushed behind them, whispering, and the cold nipped at their backs.

Luke yanked Leia forwards, carefully not looking behind her; she teetered on a log, then jumped down and gave him a hand. "What was—"

_Cease ignoring me. I am your destiny._

"I don't know."

"Should we—"

"I don't know."

Leia shivered. "I don't like this."

The cold suddenly _rushed_ outwards, like wings that suddenly unfurled, and he squeezed his eyes shut, grabbing Leia's arm and _doubling over_ , struck to the core by—

_Luke!?_ Vader's voice was panicked. _My son, why are you so afraid. What is happening. Why—_

Distantly, he heard a scream. It was not Leia's.

He leaned forwards, nearly buried his face in the dirt, and tried to calm his breathing.

He was going to die.

No. No, he wasn't, why was he thinking that, there was _nothing here_ , just cold and fear. He scrunched his eyelids and took deep, deep breaths, his thoughts whirling at a speed unheard of… as something curled a claw around his shoulder.

All he could feel was cold.

Cold on his spine, violent shudders, spasming in his muscles, some parts of him frozen totally still. Sweat dripping down his back, his chest tightened until he could barely breathe, his shoulders tense and back aching—

All he could _sense_ was the cold. Swimming around him, thick in the air, sluggish, and he needed to be brave, and…

It was coming around in front of him.

It would be easier to face his fear if he could face it head on, right?

Right?

He lifted his chin—

And then something prompted him to look down again, shaking, as cold breath—did this creature _breathe_ or was that wind?—puffed in his face. Ghosted along his cheeks. Stirred the hair over his forehead.

He patted to his side in the dark for Leia's hand, and when he found it they both jolted—yelped—then clung on fiercely.

_Luke, what is wrong. Tell me what is wrong…_

He took deep breaths. Leia took them with him; he could feel her terror, her tension, as acutely as his own, and knew suddenly, abruptly, that this… this was not him.

This feeling was not an intrinsic, natural part of him.

This was… something inflicted.

Again, the overwhelming urge to open his eyes and glare his assailant, right in whatever it had for a face, but he resisted.

The Force… the Force was weak, dim, but there was life and so there was light.

He wanted to cry with joy as he brushed against it, and whatever that creature was jerked back in shock. He could sense his father reaching for him as well, and the relief he could sense— _feel_ , in himself, too—was not something he wanted to examine in particular.

"Back," he whispered, straightening up again, some of the dirt falling from his face. "Get back. Get _away_ from us, I swear—"

His voice broke as he reached out and hit… something. It wasn't physical, his hand passed right through it, but it was _chilling_ and _biting_ and it _clung_ to his hand like moisture, except it certainly wasn't. It left a hideous film on him; goosebumps rose all up his arm and back.

At the disgust and renewed fear, it pressed closer.

"No! _Back_! You will not hurt us!" he cried. The cold paused, the shadow on his senses shuddering… then moving away.

Luke opened his eyes.

The wood was exactly as he had left it.

"What happened?" Leia asked, pushing herself to her feet and brushing the dirt off her. He tossed her a sideways glance.

"Did you open your eyes?"

She shook her head. "I thought… it seemed like a bad idea. Something told me not to."

Leia's instincts had always been good.

Since Bespin, Luke had been thinking more and more on _why_ and _how_ they were so good, but that wasn't a line of questioning he wanted to pursue right now.

"Let's keep going," she said. "Is the… _thing_ … still near?"

Luke cast out his senses. It was in the… canopy, the bushes, the earth. Watching them.

"Yes," he admitted. "But not here." He reached for the light and let it pulse, let it warm him like a Wookiee's hug. The shadows skittered.

They stumbled forwards through the trees for a few minutes, silence reigning, and then—

Luke tripped.

He hit the ground again; he thought he heard a hiss, but it faded quickly. When he looked up, he screamed.

It was another statue.

"Luke…"

"I know," he choked out. It was another statue, seemingly fresher than the last ones, with only a few vines entrapping them. The fear in the woman's soft human face was palpable—and suddenly Luke understood it completely.

Leia did too. "Did… _that thing_ do this?"

He didn't reply. He didn't know how to reply.

He just stared.

Leia let out a breath, and dragged him away, clearly resigning herself to his strange melancholy.

"Let's keep going," she repeated. "We _need_ to get to that cottage."

* * *

They would walk with their eyes closed all the way there if they had to—and sometimes, they did. It circled. It watched. It was—

"A bird?"

"A monster?"

"A Jedi?"

"A Sith?"

"A lady of the forest?"

"A shadow?"

"A hallucination?"

"A nightmare made flesh," Luke muttered grimly to himself. Leia, from her expression, couldn't disagree. He wondered what she had felt—what it had elicited in her, drawn on, to invoke so much horror.

He had been reminded of—to no surprise—that cave. That revelation. That horror.

Everything reminded him of that, at the moment.

But that monster had only reminded him as well that he was not the powerful Jedi- or Sith-to-be that Ben and Vader seemed obsessed with. He was not the Force, or its powerful wielder. He had not saved himself from his own fears; he had nearly been crushed by them.

He was a human of crude matter, and he was so afraid.

He was—

Suddenly overwhelmed by a flood of hope again.

Leia spotted it first. She jerked upright, staring, and yanked on his arm. "Is that—"

He looked in that direction and despite himself, grinned broadly. "I think it is."

A cottage in the distance. Still whole and cute, shone on by beams of light from above, tilting amber as the sun set on the next day. Luke hadn't realised how long they'd been walking until now—how _far_ they'd walked—until he saw it, and suddenly he felt exhausted.

All he wanted to do was stumble over there, get inside, and collapse.

But he couldn't.

They both hid behind a bush, and surveyed the area.

"Fett's cottage?" Leia murmured. "Doesn't look like something of his."

"Nothing on this planet has looked like something of his," Luke returned, pulling out a pair of macrobinoculars to hand to her. She scanned the windows and the roof, while he scanned with the Force.

"Nothing," they said in unison. No one she could see, and no one he could sense. The cottage was empty of any sentient being. Of Fett…

And of _Han._

Leia cursed, fiercely, under her breath. Luke just let his disappointment roil.

_Where are you? I know you can hear me._

He ignored him.

"We should check it out anyway," he said weakly. "There… there might be elsewhere he could've gone, there might be—"

"Fett isn't here," Leia snapped. _"Look_ at the place! He's not here, he was _never_ here, despite what we dragged ourselves into all sorts of trouble on the hope of, and whether or not our informant lied or was just plain wrong doesn't matter, we just know that _Han is not here_!"

Luke winced, when she put it like that. "And we've fought all this way for nothing."

"Vader is waiting for you out there," Leia said, tone gentler. "I dragged you out here into his clutches on a fool's errand. I should've followed your feelings about this place—"

He cut her off. "It's alright, Leia. I came willingly. We both hoped, and we both came." He peered at the cottage again. "There might still be hope."

"No. Don't say that. We'll just set ourselves up for disappointment."

"It doesn't matter what we could have done differently," he said. "We're here now. We can't change the past. And in the present," he pointed at the cottage, and then both their growling stomachs. "We need food."

Leia took a breath. "You're right." She narrowed her eyes at the front door, tightening her grip on her blaster. "I don't like anything about this."

"Me neither," he admitted."But we just have to—"

"Move forward, yeah, we've been over this." Her tone was irritated, but fond. "Let's just go."

They approached the door carefully, blasters in their hands, and knocked. They knew no one was in, but… just in case.

No one answered.

Luke wasn't sure whether that was good or not.

They slowly, carefully, pushed the door open. It wasn't locked, Luke noted, but it did _have_ a lock; whoever lived here had just… not engaged it when they were last here. When they last left.

Where were they?

What had happened?

"So the man who bought this cottage wasn't Fett," Leia said. "An armoured man with that description of Fett's face… I wonder who it could've been."

Luke glanced around the room—the corridor was dark, the clothing pegs hanging empty on the walls. The rug was cheap and threadbare, more mud than cloth, so Luke didn't have too many qualms about traipsing right over it to peer into the rest of the cottage.

There was a kitchen, straight ahead. A tiny bathroom on the right and a single bedroom on the right, with a small bed pushed into the farthest corner from the window and a wardrobe that hung half open, to reveal a dusty, half-empty interior. Everything the man had seemed to be in various shades of black and brown, though one of the items looked a lot like one of the robes Old Ben used to wear…

Leia had gone snooping directly into the kitchen, and crowed her success—"Found some bread! And _milk_!"

"Blue milk?" he asked hopefully, calling out the door.

"No one likes blue milk except you. This is normal milk. And there's some meat, and"—she opened a few cupboards, loudly—"a _lot_ of tinned stuff in here. It looks like the man was preparing for some sort of apocalypse."

"We can thank him for it later." He cast one last glance around the room… and then his gaze fell on the chest of drawers in the corner.

He frowned.

The top drawer, he found, just had a few more clothes. The second was empty.

The third…

He reached in and pulled out the device; when he hit the button, a holo sprang out, of two men—identical twins? Their faces were the same, but then Luke noticed their armour, the insignias and colours stamped over it, and the other same-faced soldiers milling about in the background.

They were clones, he realised. One with short, blond hair; the other with orange armour and an antenna sticking out of his shoulder pad.

Was the man who kept this cottage a retired clone? Or… a runaway clone? From the Clone Wars that Ben had talked about?

Were they loyal to their lost Republic or to the Empire? There was at least one clone in the Rebellion who was the former, he knew, but there were plenty of the latter…

…and of course there'd been an armoured man who had come through Falcou, in that case.

He wasn't sure why he was surprised. Though the fact that Fett's face was so similar to a clones was—

"Luke!" Leia called. "Stop moping, come on in here and get some food!"

He went.

"I think the man who owned—owns—this place was a clone," he said, accepting the bowl of quickly heated soup that Leia handed him. It was warm, and filling, and scalded him on the way down; it was exactly what he needed. "That's why they got confused when we asked about an armoured man. And I found a holo from the Clone Wars in the chest of drawers."

Leia squinted at him in the dim light of the kitchen—he supposed he looked filthy and exhausted. She, herself, looked worried. "What do you know about the clones, Luke?"

"That they fought…" He blanked for a moment, even though his education had at least covered _that_. " _For_ the Republic?"

"They did. Under Jedi Generals, in fact. General Kenobi and General Skywalker"—Luke flinched—"were two of the most famous Jedi in the war effort. The dream team, the Negotiator and the Hero With No Fear… they disappeared with all the other Jedi when the Purges came."

"I've heard that much before," he murmured.

"I know you have." Leia had borne reluctant witness to his many, many, many awkward forays into the Jedi's history, and his interrogations of the Rebel Alliance members who'd met them. "But the thing is, the Jedi fought with the clones. They cared for them, they led them, they laid down their lives alongside them, and they befriended them. But when the then-Chancellor Palpatine ordered all Jedi to be massacred, they turned on them without a second thought."

Luke dropped his spoon. It clattered to the ground, spreading a smear of red over the floor tiles.

"Do you know why?" he asked quietly. "I find it difficult to believe that _all_ of them turned against the Jedi so easily, without… coercion or anything."

"I do too. My father even questioned it at the time—he'd interacted with the Coruscant Guard before, and they were never as… they _never_ behaved towards the Jedi, or towards him as a senator, the way they did on the night that the Jedi were killed. He was convinced something was wrong, but Palpatine made sure he never shared those thoughts beyond the family home."

She sighed, and neatly put her finished soup bowl to the side. "That's not my point, though. My point is… be careful, if they come back. They'll be trained, and ready, and _don't tell them you're a Jedi._ "

Luke swallowed. Even the soup couldn't warm the icy in his chest. "I'm not a Jedi."

"Not yet." Leia glanced around. "And a lot of this world's weirdness is to do with the Force, right?"

"Yes. At least—I think so."

"I trust your judgement." She took her bowl and rinsed it under the tap—it was a moment before the water spurted out, and when it did it splashed her whole front. The bloodstained jacket was washed pinkish, but she didn't seem bothered. "So… if you're right, and it's a clone who lives here… I don't like that they seem so connected to the Force stuff. It feels meaningful—and not necessarily in a good way."

Luke poured the rest of his soup down his throat before responding. "I agree," he said hoarsely. "But there's nothing I can do about it."

"No," she agreed. "There isn't. But we should be careful anyway. Look around the cottage more thoroughly—see if we can find anything else."

Luke glanced out the window at the pitch darkness that had descended on the woods. It had been over twenty-four hours since they'd escaped Vader, he realised distantly. Probably something like thirty-six hours.

He imagined his father was not at all happy.

His father could deal with it.

"Tomorrow, though," he said. "We've been walking all day. I'm about to collapse."

She grinned. "I'm glad I'm not the only one, then."

Then she sobered up again. "We can stay here overnight, and hope the occupant doesn't come back. By the sheets of thin dust around here, I think they've been gone a few days, perhaps two, but that's no guarantee. We need to be vigilant."

"We need sleep."

She smiled wryly. "We need both."

The warm soup was already doing its work, sending him into a haze, but he still said, "You nap first. I'll take the first watch."

"You are falling asleep on your feet. You sleep." She patted his shoulder, took the empty bowl from his hands, and guided him towards the bedroom. "You can relax for a moment, Luke. The galaxy will still be turning when you wake up."

"I could say the same about you," he shot back.

"And you will. In a few hours. But we've got a lot of things to do tomorrow—"

"—like figure out what the hell we're doing now?"

"Yes. We need to plan. We need to—"

Luke caught her wrist. "Let's both sleep," he said. "You need it as much as I do. We'll both fail as watchers."

"But the clone—"

"Isn't going to come back tonight." He was surprised to find he believed it. "We will be fine."

Leia nodded. "We're finding out where they went first thing tomorrow," she warned—teased, more like. "Up at the crack of dawn."

"You're talking to a farm boy," he shot back. "I was expecting that." He patted her on the shoulder. "Though I'd think a princess would be lazier."

She stuck her tongue out at him.


	4. Day 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke and Leia learn more about the clone, have another run in with Vader, and finally meet the main monster at the heart of the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Saturday, once again! Have a long chapter to celebrate.
> 
> This one is unbetaed, so apologies for any mistakes or weird phrasing.

This time, Luke was actually somewhat comfortable as he woke up—warm, comfortable, and full.

Even if fear still gnawed his stomach raw.

He rolled out of the bed, smiling a bit when he realised that he and Leia had had their hands clasped together all night. The sun was, somehow, straining through the window, despite the thick mist Luke could see outside that fogged the glass like something solid. He spent a moment staring out at it in faint awe before he moved again, pulling on socks—the same ones as yesterday; they hadn't exactly packed for a long haul in the forest—and tried to get dressed.

Grimacing at what he had left, he turned towards the chest of drawers; surely the clone had some spare, _clean_ underwear he could borrow. He checked the ones he hadn't gone through last night—there were only a couple of shirts interspersed with gadgets in the top drawer, gadgets that he would've picked apart to understand and play with if it were any other circumstance, then the second drawer held trousers and thermals. Luke frowned, then reached for them—it got cold at night in the woods—only to make a face when they unfurled. They were far too long for him, and _definitely_ too long for Leia.

The third drawer had pyjamas, but so few of them that it was nearly bare. They were still in their packaging, he noticed as well, with the thick, fluffy fabric having patterns of purple ducks, yellow banthas and a green lizard or dragon creature on them respectively. Gifts, he presumed, possibly from the villagers or anyone else the clone had run into on the planet. Or maybe a panic buy that he'd proceeded to never open.

Luke went to close the drawer—smiling at the ducks again—then frowned when his accidentally too-rough motion jolted something in the back. It clattered, buzzed, and lit up blue.

Another holo…?

Luke frowned, reaching for the device. As he groped in the drawer, his fingers closed on a small, flimsi book; he drew that out first in curiosity, then set it aside. Then he reached back in, then finally hit the holo making all the noise, and drew it out to—

_"This lightsaber, General Kenobi,"_ a voice mocked, _"is your life."_

Luke dropped the holo. It bounced on the squishy duck pyjamas.

_"This lightsaber, General Kenobi, is your life,"_ it repeated.

Luke, slowly, went to pick it up again. And _stared_.

That was Ben.

Ben, as he'd never known him—red-headed, young, full of a sort of sardonic vigour that reminded him of Leia in a way, accepting the hilt of his lightsaber with a _look_ at the person recording him that would've done Uncle Owen proud. The holo looped, Ben bringing his lightsaber toward him again and again and again.

_"This lightsaber, General Kenobi, is your life."_

_"This lightsaber, General Kenobi, is your life."_

_"This lightsaber, General Kenobi, is your life."_

"Luke?" Leia sat up, grimacing at him. "What're you doing?"

"Trying to find a change of clothes."

"Good idea, you stink."

He stuck his tongue out at her over his shoulder, then turned back to the holo.

His heart contracted in his chest as he glanced at the holo again. Ben smirked at him, through the machine and through the years.

_"This lightsaber, General Kenobi, is your life."_

"That doesn't sound like looking for clothes, though."

Luke switched the holo off. "I found a book and a holo," he said. "This is a clone, definitely—I think he fought with Ben during the Clone Wars—and this notebook has… strange writings in it."

"Let me see."

She stood from the bed and he tossed it to her over his shoulder; she caught it neatly. He went to put the holo away.

"Looks like whoever he is, he's gone to…" She turned a page. "He's got a lot of notes about the Force, about the other clones, something called Order Sixty-Six, about the Jedi… and there's a Jedi Temple in the middle of the forest. That's where he's gone."

Luke had found a fresh pair of pants in the underwear drawer; he nicked some socks while he was at it. "Yeah? We'd… we'd already guessed at that."

"Don't tell me you're not curious. You've jumped at every Jedi Temple we've ever passed."

"Of course I'm curious. But—" _But I don't know if I want to be a Jedi anymore. I don't know if I can be a Jedi. I don't know…_

"There's a darkness in this forest," he said weakly. "If… if we go to the centre…"

"We could get caught up in it," she agreed. "Or, we could leave the forest, and get caught up in Vader's darkness instead." She shrugged. "Or we could stay here."

Luke closed his eyes. "I don't know what's going on in these woods and I don't know if I want to know," he said, thinking about those statues—the people frozen in fear, deader than dust. "And we _know_ that that's not Fett—it won't be Han we find there. This was all for nothing."

"Unless you learn about the Force because of it."

"Unless I learn about the Force because of it," he agreed. "And also…" He glanced down at the holo. Ben had looked… affectionate, towards the clone. That holo he'd seen the day before, of two clones smiling at each other…

Whether or not he'd turned against the Jedi, whether or not he sided with the Empire… whether or not he'd run into the heart of this danger intentionally, without another thought.

Luke couldn't use a man's house, see the depths of compassion and memory in his heart, the details of a lost and lonely life, and not try to save him from his own folly.

He might need him.

And perhaps Leia was right in that facing fears was ultimately the best way of solving them.

"Alright," he said. "Let's get changed. Let's get something to eat. And then… use the book, and we can go to this Jedi Temple to see what's going on."

Leia smiled at him. "Are you afraid?"

"Oh, I'm terrified." He shrugged on his jacket and pulled the hood over his head. With the chilling mist pressed against the windowpanes, his ears were cold. "Let's go."

* * *

But the first problem came the moment they stepped outside—and Luke realised they were not alone.

That… cold, ghostly thing from the previous day was ringing the cottage, unable or unwilling to enter, it seemed, but pacing and freezing the moisture in the early morning air to cloudy droplets. Luke sucked in a damp, icy breath… but he grasped for the warm well of the Force inside him and found the Ghost lingering in the trees above.

That wasn't what was important, though.

_Somehow_. What was more important was—

"Drop your weapons, Skywalker," barked a voice. Artificial. Modulated. A trooper's.

And the other thing chilling the landscape that fine morning stood a few metres in front of him, like an immovable shadow, the _kish-kosh_ of his breathing inexorable.

Luke reached for his blaster; he heard Leia's grip tighten on hers.

"Both of you!" the squadron leader barked. He fired a warning shot that flashed past Luke's ear to collide with the door. _"Now!_ Weapons on the ground!"

Luke dropped his blaster. Leia did the same.

Luke glanced around, taking stock of the situation. There were perhaps a dozen stormtroopers tracking him, his every move, standing stock still and ready. Except, when he reached out with the Force…

Only six were conscious.

The other six…

The screams that assaulted him pounded his brain into a headache like a blacksmith on an anvil; terror, terror, terror that cut him right to the core, vicious, as precise as a surgical scalpel. He sucked in a breath; his lungs felt like they'd been kicked in.

"Use that," Vader intoned. "It will empower you."

"This doesn't _bother_ you?" Luke snapped, lifting a hand to his head in pain… then, with great effort, _forced_ it out of him again. "You— your troops are dying, turning into human statues, they're scared to _death_ —"

He made to take a step forwards, but Leia caught his arm, even as a trooper shouted, "Freeze!"

"Let him come, Commander," Vader gloated. "We have him now—"

Leia hissed, "Luke, _close your eyes_."

He sensed it a moment after she did.

The dark side swooping down, the screech of suffering, and then his eyes were snapped closed just before it descended.

The screams were the worst part.

He could hear them acutely. The voice modulators in the stormtroopers' helmets gave way to static as they _shrieked_ , no fight going on, just looking into the eyes of their worst nightmare and cowering back before their bodies caught up with their brains and they were left immobilised. It was over _so quickly_ , and Luke wanted to sob at the sudden loss, the sound of several blasters hitting the floor—

He gasped as something cold— _familiar_ , if horribly familiar, cold, not that ghost thing—wrapped around him, and dragged him forwards.

Leia yelped as his hand was wrenched out of hers. "Luke—"

He opened his eyes for half a second to see her snap hers shut in time for the Ghost— _that_ was what it looked like from the back, Force, he could barely focus on it but it rippled with light and triggered every instinct that meant _danger_ —to barrel at her, growl, then whip around—

Luke closed his eyes too, even as a durasteel grip clenched around his shoulder.

The worst thing about seeing the Ghost attack those stormtroopers, he decided, was sensing how _these_ statues _were still alive._

They weren't dead yet.

They were still standing there, imprints in the Force.

_So what was it that had killed the other ones?_

"At last I have you," Vader boomed, "my son."

He heard a sharp intake of breath. _Leia._

_No, no, Leia…_

"I," he hissed right back, "am _not your son_."

The Ghost, still hovering somewhere in the clearing, murmured indistinct words.

The grip tightened. "I see you are still allowing Kenobi's lies to lead you astray. I should have anticipated your resistance to my revelation in Cloud City, but _here_ —"

"No. No, no, no—"

"Saying that will not make it so."

"Do you really want to do this now? When there's a _monster_ in the glade with us, that just defeated all your men?"

_"These_ are the men from the local garrison. And any men are inconsequential in comparison to you. This beast is a creature of the dark side; it may take your friend, but it will recognise my own authority and _leave us be_."

Something roiled in Luke's chest at the… callous coldness, there, the almost vicious indifference. This— this was his _father_ —

"I _hate you_ ," he hissed, nearly opening his eyes and spinning around just so he could spit in his face… but with every surge of darkness, of _cold_ , of fear, that Ghost seemed to get up the courage to move closer to him.

Vader used that grip on his shoulder to spin him around, then forced his chin up. "Look at me."

Luke swallowed.

_"Look at me."_

Luke looked.

For a moment, his gaze locked on Vader's; acid-yellow eyes fizzed behind those red lenses, drinking in the sight of him with an intense greed. Then something behind Luke moved, and he shifted his gaze to…

To watch its reflection in Vader's helmet.

It was hideous. It shifted with every primal fear he would ever experience. Its eyes—if one could call them eyes—were dead white. Spikes ripped from its back, and it had… an amount of limbs Luke could not count, although it glided more than walked, and when it lifted one that limb had a number of appendages that he could not count, each tipped with a gleaming, razored claw—

_"Look at me_ , _"_ Vader demanded, sensing his attention shift, but Luke's gaze was caught on the Ghost's now and even in reflection, even without that direct effect it had wielded on all those poor people, he could not look away.

The Ghost was right behind him; he could feel the biting cold against his back, his muscles going numb, as a single claw scraped down his cheek, near his ear, drawing blood. He trembled in Vader's grip…

And Vader's grip was unchanging.

Vader was growing still.

It was barely noticeable at first… then Luke realised the grip on his shoulder, loosened briefly, did not tighten; the faint motions, the hand tilting his chin…

Solid.

As a statue.

Only his respirator wheezed.

There was a grunt—a roar—Luke could _sense_ his father fighting the hold, with a ferocity the other sacrifices had not possessed, and suddenly the crimson lightsaber leapt off his belt, zipped through the air with the Force; Luke ducked and scrunched his eyes shut just soon enough to hear the monster's _screech_ … then the monster's snigger, as the saber just passed right through.

That thing… wasn't solid.

It _couldn't be taken down by a lightsaber_.

It—

"Luke," Leia said. "Is he…?"

He swallowed and replied, "I think he's frozen."

_A temporary circumstance,_ snarled the voice in his brain. _Do not think you can run from me, Luke; I will be free in a moment and we_ will _be returning to the_ Executor _together—_

Luke pressed against his mind, trying to sense what was going on. He was still paralysed in that… fear, or whatever the effect was.

Luke pressed a little harder, and got… a flash of blue lightning, a woman's tearful and betrayed face, his own screams as he plummeted into the chasm on Bespin…

...and more than that, a teenager's corpse in a burning homestead, a young Rebel blasted to pieces on Cymoon, crashed in a dogfight, slain by a misstrike on a gantry, by more of that lightning leaping from gnarled fingers…

...then yanked back.

Behind him, he thought he heard Leia get to her feet, and fear for her shot through him. The Ghost was near him… she couldn't approach, it was—

But the Ghost seemed uninterested in her for the time being. Instead, it coiled around him like a coat of ice, hissing something he didn't understand. He bent over double, breathing hard, pressing his eyes closed even as those wicked claws pried at them…

Then he heard Leia's steps come forward.

And then he heard the worst thing he had ever had the misfortune to hear.

It wasn't a scream. It wasn't a shriek. Those words were too… _natural_ , too real; this reverberated on a psychic level, punched the air and the light and the consciousness from him, thumping to the ground.

His ears rang.

This wasn't what had happened to the statues. What was happening to Luke?

He was on the floor—seeing himself on the floor through eyes… eyes that were not his own… was strange. He watched himself slump there, eyes still closed, and the monster prowl; the viewer—him— _Leia_ , because of course it was—stepped forwards—

"No," she intoned, protectiveness rearing in her gut like a flame to banish the winter chill. _"Leave my friend alone."_

The Ghost ignored her, stalking around Luke, before lifting a long claw and raising it above his abdomen—

"I _said_ ," Leia spat, _"let Luke_ _go!"_

And she surged forwards to grab that claw.

It was only one of many. It had several others, even as this one sliced pain and blood down her palm. But Leia _trembled_ with fierceness, clenched it as tightly as her human hand could, and Luke could feel the warmth and the heat and the light spearing from her in her determination. She took a stance above Luke, planted her feet and _shoved_ the Ghost back.

She was afraid—for Luke, for herself—but she buried it deep down and thought only of that moment he'd called to her on Bespin, and there had never been any other choice but to risk love and life for him; his soft faith, desperation, warmth, immense warmth calling out to her, asking for help…

She looked the Ghost in the horrible white eye and said, "You do not intimidate me. _You will leave my friend be._ "

And something changed.

It was enough of a shock to Luke, in his dazed, Force-vision state; Leia, who was _feeling_ it happen under the soft skin of her hand, jerked back in shock, staring. The Ghost stared back at her as the spikes retracted into its body and it shivered, casting off the translucency, the light effects… It blinked and its eyes were green, human green, then limbs forged together to make four, a flowing mane became long, ragged hair, and it sagged back.

It was a woman.

Near-human, or humanoid. Half-dead.

Leia gasped.

She still had her hand knotted around the woman's bicep; she let her down, gently, onto the forest floor.

The woman gazed up at her, and the amount of pain in her face broke Leia's heart.

She looked like the woman they'd met when they first entered the woods: same garment, same look, same broken, desperate expression.

She reached up a hand, the skin cracked and bleeding, and pressed it to Leia's cheek. Leia leaned in closer to catch a few delicate whispers, wisps of noise, as they fell in a language she did not understand.

Then the hand fell, and the woman went slack.

Leia sat back, reaching for Luke's unconscious hand, and Luke wished he was in the mental state to take it.

The woman was dead.

* * *

It was only slightly under an hour later that Luke woke up, and his surroundings were… different.

"Luke!?" Her relief was tangible. "Oh, thank the stars!"

"Leia?" He pushed himself upright, feeling the weight of something shift over him—a duvet. He was in the cottage again. "What—"

"You've been unconscious for hours. I was worried that you—"

"That Ghost. The—"

"The woman?"

Despite the fact she had know way of knowing he knew, he nodded.

Leia dropped her eyes. "She's dead. I… don't know what I did. But she's dead."

"I know." He caught her hand, and squeezed it. "It's alright. I don't know what you did either, but it was self-defence. She was attacking us. She… seemed happy, at whatever you did, that you freed her."

Leia glanced at him. "You saw that?"

"I…" Luke paused.

How the _hells_ was he supposed to explain what that vision had been?

"I… sensed it," he said vaguely.

She gave him a sceptical look. "Force thing?"

"Force thing."

She sighed. "Alright. Enough about me—how are you? You… you were unconscious for so long, I—"

"I think I'm fine now. That— that scream…" He shuddered just thinking about it, the way his breath had caught and ravaged his chest, the tightness in his lungs and the shriek building and the pounding darkness in his head and the hot press behind his eyes before blackness was all he knew— "I don't know what it was. It was dark."

He took a shuddering breath. "Ever— everything around here is."

He took a deep breath, and gave her a wan smile. "But I… I'm awake now." Awake, and shuddering—shivering despite the duvet—but awake. "We should get going—how much daylight did we lose?" It must be past noon local time…

"You don't look well."

"I am well." They both cringed as the Force crashed around them with the lie—Luke cringing just as much because he sounded like… _him_ … as well.

Leia glared.

Luke glared back.

"I'm not going to stay here," he said. Ants were crawling under his skin; he felt… jittery, on edge. He needed to do this. They— things would probably go wrong if he did this, but he needed to.

He didn't think that clone had much time left. He had bad feelings about everything…

But maybe that was the general dread and existential fear talking.

"You're going to stay there. You're going to rest. We—"

"Need to save that clone." He caught her wrist before she could push him back down.

"You need to recover!"

"I _am_ recovered."

"You're—!"

"I'm as recovered as I'll ever be in this forest," he amended.

"That's not a very high bar."

"It's the only one we're going to clear until we get out of here. So we can either go back out there and face the stormtroopers…" He held her gaze "…or into the temple to… find out what's going on."

She glared at him. "I don't like either of those options."

He took a moment to appreciate the irony: before now, their positions had been utterly reversed. "I know. We can stay here—"

"I know we can't stay here." She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. "Vader's still outside, you know?"

Luke blinked. _"What?"_

"He's outside. Frozen. I— I don't know if he's alive or dead, if that _thing_ —woman?—got him too, but… he hasn't moved. He hasn't come to hurt us. I don't know what he's doing, but I don't like it. Anything powerful enough to take down him…"

"Is more than enough for me," Luke said bitterly. His heart sprinted.

"Is something that might be worth _us_ being wary of," she corrected. "We shouldn't… we can't rush in, just to play the hero. I want to help that clone too, I—"

Luke whispered: "Something's here, Leia. Something we've never seen before."

"And you're advocating that we run towards it? I'm a politician. I know how to pick my battles." She glanced at his prosthetic hand. "And you should know to do it too."

Because when he hadn't… it had been a farce.

Ridiculous.

It hadn't even been a battle.

_You are reckless,_ Yoda chided in his memory.

_I am not reckless, Master,_ he whispered back. _I am frozen still._ How could he know where to go, how could he move forwards, when he didn't even know anything about himself?

Vader, reaching out a hand to him on Bespin. _You do not realise your importance. You have only begun to discover your power._

"Why do you want to go into the temple so badly? When they first mentioned it in Falcou, you looked like you were disgusted by the sound of it. It— Luke, I love you, you're a wonderful human being, but _I know_ it… this can't just be because of one clone who you've never even met."

He squeezed his eyes shut.

_You will be coming with me. If you do not want the Princess to die for your cowardice and folly, you will do as I say._

He gritted his teeth. "I can't go out and face him, Leia."

"Well, he's frozen on our front doorstep. You have to, either way. And—"

"And we don't know how long he'll _stay_ frozen."

"No." She sighed. "We don't."

"I… I can't…"

She seemed so sympathetic. "I know. Facing him on Bespin… I was—" She choked up. "I was grateful, or glad, for a moment? When I realised that it wasn't me who he wanted on Bespin. He was going to stick me in a cell and forget about me. It was so much better than last time…" She took in a deep breath. "Then he took Han, and I haven't felt so terrible since I got Alderaan destroyed."

"He said he's my father," Luke said. "You— you heard him. He told me on Bespin, too, and I—"

He broke off.

After a moment, he pried his eyes open again, waiting to see Leia's expression twist into hatred, but saw only sympathy.

That broke him deeper than disgust ever could.

"I can't face that," he said. "In Falcou… he was right, I was a coward. I ran, as fast as I could, and it wasn't about survival—not entirely—it was about… getting away from _him_."

He closed his eyes again.

"And I can't go back… I can't leave the woods and face him. I can't even decide to—because all my decisions led me here, and what if I mess— what if things go wrong again, and— and I _hate it here_ , I _can't face him_ —"

"But at some point," she said, "we have to."

He nodded. His voice cracked. "We have to." He worked his right hand. "It's easier to be brave when it's to save something else—it's easier to forget about _me_ when it's about _someone else_. It's so much easier to be kind to others than to yourself. And that clone needs us."

"So does the Rebellion. So does Han. And they need us intact, in the best possible condition, to help them."

The words stabbed him.

"That clone needs us," he repeated. He didn't even know what he was saying anymore—didn't know what he was arguing for. His mind and words were scrambling into nonsense. "Whatever darkness is in this forest, whatever is causing all this fear… it's only an echo of what I've felt every day since I leapt off of that gantry. Hearing his voice in my head…"

"In your _head_?" Leia asked.

"Yes. It's like… he's up there, talking to me, I can hear him—"

"I know what you mean." A strange look crossed over her face. "I… you know that I heard something similar to that on Bespin. That was how I knew to come and find you."

Luke nodded.

"You had him in your head like _that_?" she murmured. "All this time?"

"During that chase, even—during the trek through the woods…"

"Every day?"

"Every day."

_"Constantly_ talking to you about it, demanding you join him, addressing you as… as _son…_?"

_"Yes,"_ he got out through gritted teeth. "Yes, it's there constantly, I can't think, I shouldn't have been sent on this mission at all because I'm _useless_ when I freeze up like that—"

"Luke, I don't think you have any idea how brave you've already been."

He blinked.

Glanced at her.

Her irises glistened with unshed tears.

She punched him in the shoulder. "You and your father…"

She sighed.

The politician was running out of words.

"You were always fearless," she said. "Reckless, even. I told you that before. Hells, I've told you _this_ before, but I'm telling you again, because obviously you need to hear it again.

"You idolised your father, and… you used it to do good. It inspired you to do good; far better than I'm sure your father ever did. I remember when you barged into my cell on the Death Star and said you were here to save me, damn the consequences—you were a teenage farm boy on a _military institution_ , and you managed to march into the highest security detention level without losing your nerve. And I… was terrified, after Alderaan. Of everything. That I'd fail the Rebellion, that it was my fault, that I'd fail all of you as well… And you were an inspiration. You were something bright and brave to remind me to be too."

He swallowed.

She squeezed his shoulder. "Don't stop being afraid. But you've suffered so much, the last few months; you've been so brave, all on your own. You don't have to be alone. You don't have to face Vader alone. I'll be here for you. I'll come for you—just like you'll always come for me." She smiled. "And how we'll apparently trek through the thickest part of a haunted forest for the slightest hope of saving Han."

He laughed. "Foolishly, one could say."

"Then curse us for our folly!" she declared—somewhat dramatically. "I love you. I love Han. I love Chewie, and Artoo, and Threepio—I love my friends, and I will march through that forest again for them!"

He accepted her hand; they grasped each other's fingers tightly, like children in a fairy tale.

"And I'll do it again right now. Whichever way you want to go. Towards the temple? Or back to the village?" She lowered her voice. "Where do you want to go? Not run from—where do you want to _go_?"

He opened his mouth.

Closed it.

"What would Jedi Skywalker do?"

He cast her a horrified glance. "Jedi Skywalker is now a _Sith Lord_!"

"I'm not talking about _him_. I'm talking about the Jedi who freed all those slaves on Cymoon. Who led the Rogues to victory time and time again. I'm talking about the Jedi who dropped everything to come and rescue us on Bespin, no matter the cost!"

He snorted derisively. "I don't even have a lightsaber."

"Does a lightsaber make a Jedi?"

…did it?

He didn't know.

What did he think?

_"What is Jedi Skywalker going to do?_ "

He sighed. "We need to go to the temple," he said. "We need to go _now_."

"And why do we need to do that?"

"Because this forest, this planet, has suffered long enough," he replied on instinct. There was no bravado in his voice—not like there would have been a year ago, before… everything. But there was conviction, and he supposed that was what mattered. "We need to go and help them, no matter what. Han isn't here. This isn't about saving him, anymore, or… or even the clone… It's just something that needs to be done."

She blinked.

He wondered what she'd been expecting.

"It's going to be difficult and dangerous," she warned. "I'm obliged to tell you that."

"I know. But we'll do it anyway. And…" He let out a breath. "We'll survive anyway."

She smiled. He wondered what she was seeing, as her gaze moved over his face.

She said, "Sounds like a plan."

* * *

They left the cottage soon after—sure enough, Luke saw with a flash of terror, Vader was still there.

Staring at him with that bug-eyed gaze.

He looked like a beast out of his worst nightmares.

Now that he was looking for it, he saw it in Leia too: the flinch, the clenched jaw, the controlled breathing as she glared at him. But he saw, with admiration, the way she held himself anyway.

"You said he can't move?" he said.

Vader's voice pounded in his head. _I am still aware of your presence, and can hear your insolence—_

He flinched from it, staggering back… then came back to look directly at him.

"He can't move," he decided.

"Let's go. Before the sun goes down."

"One moment." Luke studied his father's mask for a few long instances, ignoring the voice that tried to boom in his mind; he let it wash over him like comm static.

He bent down to the ground, took a fistful of mud…

And threw it at Vader's statue.

It splattered along his mask. Dripped onto his shoulder pads and his armour. Caked the cape and the little metal chain, staining the armourweave dull.

Leia burst out laughing.

_Young one—_

Luke burst out laughing as well.

"Oh, if only I had a cam on me," Leia began—then Luke tossed her his comlink. _"Thank you."_ She snapped a holo.

Vader's fury _exploded_.

The trees shuddered.

Luke's mirth died—Vader could still use the Force, even if he felt… poorly connected… right now.

"We should go."

"Yes we should." Leia tucked the comlink away. "But honestly? That just made everything worth it."

* * *

The way was clearer, this time—the Force was crystalline and smooth, and Luke wondered how much of its turmoil had been his own. It still… crawled, to an extent, moving sluggishly and unpleasantly, but it showed him the way, and answered his call.

It told him that there was something waiting for them.

The greatest challenge, he concluded with a wry, bitter resolve, was yet to come.

The temple even twinkled—in the Force _and_ in the light of the setting sun, the crimson dusk falling over its white stone towers as they rose from the trees like a signal tower in the desert. He approached it with a quiet sense of awe, vastly enjoying the arches and flows of the stones, their more detailed woodwork carvings…

It was all choked with brambles. Vines snaked across the path; bushes and bushels of prickles blocked their way, and they had to wade their way through them to get onto the steps.

The door was heavy, well-made, and thankfully unlocked.

"Here we go," Leia said. "In we go—this is where we come. Do you have any feelings about…" She turned around. "Luke?"

He was staring at another door—a trapdoor, barely visible where it was buried under the vegetation. Something in his chest tugged at him.

It was the same feeling that had tugged him towards that carbon freezing chamber on Bespin.

It was the same feeling that had tugged him towards the Jundland Wastes on the day his aunt and uncle had died.

"Wait," he called softly. "I think…"

He unsheathed a vibroblade from his belt and slashed back some of the thorns, letting himself use the Force to _shove_ them off the wooden trapdoor, leaving shallow scratches and gouges in the surface. Then he grabbed the handle and lifted it.

It creaked. Earth crumbled at the edges, tumbling over a sturdy staircase, leading down into darkness.

He sheathed the vibroblade.

"This is where we go," he murmured. He didn't want to shout; this place was…

… _sedate_.

He didn't wait for an answer. He just started down the steps, and if he heard an indignant mutter about rushing into danger, he ignored it.

The steps wound ever farther down, until the ground shifted from loose earth to firm stone, cold to his touch. He fumbled for the corner of the turn, fudged for a glowrod at his hip and switched it on—

The cavern _glittered_.

There was a shriek above him.

"Leia!?"

He dashed up again and stared, nearly yelping as she barrelled down the steps, slamming the trapdoor down behind her.

"What—"

_"Shh,"_ she hissed… then crept up the stairs again, lifted the trapdoor just enough that a single chink of light slipped in, and stared.

Luke joined her, pressing his belly against the stone and staring.

First there was a chittering, then a chattering. Then—

He gasped at the swarm of twig creatures that flew past. The same ones who'd attacked them, their speeder, days earlier, and they were hot on the heels of…

That woman.

That woman who'd screamed.

Luke and Leia exchanged a glance. Luke pressed his lips tightly together, not daring to lower the trapdoor in case it made a noise she heard, not daring to stay there in case she turned around and saw them.

They needn't have worried.

She seemed… absent. She walked forwards slowly, purposelessly, shaking her head often and muttering to herself. They watched as she finally stumbled onto the steps, the twigs piling underneath her as an extra step as she nearly stumbled off the side of them again, then got to the top.

The door swung open for her without her touching it.

She entered, the twigs flooding in after her… then it swung closed with a _thud_.

They both sat there for long, tense minutes. Time trickled by like the sweat on his brow.

Then, slowly—ever so slowly—Luke lowered the door and they were plunged into the dark again.

"Good thing we didn't go that way, then," Leia said breathlessly. "What's down here?"

He smiled, despite the situation. "Wait til you see."

She grasped in the dark and he took her hand, as they crept single file, Luke ahead with the glowrod, the earth kaleidoscoping on either side of them… and back into that glittering cavern.

Leia gave a soft gasp, letting go of his hand to cover her mouth. Luke couldn't blame her. It was bright enough in here to see by the light of the stones, so he turned off the glowrod and heard…

…like the whispering of a thousand winds through a thousand trees…

_…peace peace peace peace peace peace peace peace…_

…in the vague _shshshsshshsh_ of Tatooine's breeze in the canyons.

It was a small cavern, lined with walls of glowing white rock, cool and rough to the touch, translucent. He ran a hand along them and found a warmth blossoming in his chest.

_Here._

_We are here._

_You are here._

_Peace…_

He smiled and took in a deep breath.

"Luke?" Leia stopped her examination of the place, the tunnel that led onwards—looped round to run under the temple. She observed him in the sparkling light.

_Here._

_Here, here, here._

_Here, here you must help, here you must look, here you will find, here here here here here…_

He kept running his hand over the walls, even as the song crested to a crescendo and he could no longer hear the anxious beat of his heart.

_Here._

His hand closed around an outcrop.

One piece of sharp, jagged rock bit into his palm, but the pain was shooting and passing, fading to nothing the same way the blood seeped into the crevices of the stones and shimmered into nothingness. He just held it, and felt that piece come loose in his hand without force.

If his cut was already healed when he brought up his palm to examine the crystal, he didn't notice.

It thrummed with energy, green and blue and pink and amber fracturing on its surface in a thousand iridescent shades, shining a white light on his dirtied hands. He smiled at it, lost in bliss.

"Luke?" Leia asked again.

He closed his hand around it, and turned away.

"We should keep moving," he said. "The temple's ahead."

Leia gave him a look. "And what was that?"

He glanced around the beautiful cavern again, thinking about Ben's old journal—the details of the construction of a lightsaber that he'd been poring over for months now.

"Exactly what I needed," he said.

* * *

The tunnel they were in wound deeper, and deeper, still twinkling with crystals. It split off at one junction into a five-pointed star, each tunnel burrowing even deeper underground, glowing faintly. There must be a whole labyrinth running under the temple—under the _woods_ —and Luke quietly marvelled that anyone could navigate it.

He knew _how_ they did it—he was doing it himself. The Force was as dark as ever above, but here it was clearer, brightened and lit by the crystals, and the way snaked in front of them, perfectly simple.

He knew where they needed to go: down the darkest tunnel, taking a sharp right, with the crystals petering out quickly to be swathed in the dark again. He didn't hesitate.

He still awed that it was possible at all.

Leia caught up to him quickly, striding side by side, almost in sync with each other. Her gaze kept slipping to his pocket where he stashed the kyber crystal, and he could sense the questions she had.

"Jedi thing?" she said finally. "I mean, I assume. What is that?"

"A kyber crystal," he replied. "They… they're what power lightsabers."

Leia widened her eyes. "You mean—"

"I do." A shift in the Force—like the feeling that rumbled through you when the stone concealing the entrance to the cave you'd hidden yourself in was shoved aside to let the vicious daylight in. A grinding reveal. "Did you sense that?"

He didn't have time to realise that the question was stupid, asking his non-Jedi friend if she'd sensed something in the Force, but of course Leia and the mystery neither of them understood yet surprised him: she murmured, "Yes…"

"Something's coming."

Luke squinted as they left the light of the crystals behind entirely and lit his glowrod again, forging onwards. They were walking for several more long minutes when they reached the steps up into the heart of the temple, and his foot struck stone.

He hesitated, glancing up into the stairwell. That rumbling was only getting louder.

Leia had no such qualms. She strode ride past him, plucked the glowrod from his fingers and ascended the stairs.

Except… it wasn't a trapdoor they eventually found at the top. It was an ordinary, upright door; as they traversed towards it, the farther up they went, the more it was an ordinary winding stairwell they were in. The beauty of kyber crystals seemed very far away in something so mundane.

As they climbed, Leia said, "Luke."

"Leia?" He glanced sideways at her. The pale light of the glowrod painted her face in pallor.

"What does it feel like?" she asked. "The Force."

"The Force…" He frowned. "It's… a feeling, more than anything else."

She gave him a look.

"Right, right. I know that's not helpful. I… it's like a tingling in your fingers, it's a… _connection_ to the world… It's—" He paused. "I don't know how to describe it except… a confidence. You know stuff. You _can do_ stuff. You can feel it."

"Oh?"

"You can feel things before they happen—it's just a bad feeling, like a twinge in your chest, but it's there and you can react… You can tell when someone's lying"—to an unfortunate extent sometimes: he'd always known that Vader was not—"and you can tell when they're truthful…"

"I was always good at that," Leia commented.

Luke glanced at her. "I think neither or us are in denial that… you have the Force in some way."

She nodded. "We're agreed on that."

"But—you said it takes control sometimes, fills your whole body." The passage narrowed as it twirled up, and Leia went first, her voice drifting over her shoulder. "What does that feel like? What—"

Alarms blared in his head.

Luke leapt back before he'd even registered it, feet finding the broad steps below and catching him before he fell. He stared—

As Leia ducked on instinct, a blade scything out of the wall to shear away a piece of her hair; jumped up to avoid the next swing; backed up the stairs, panting, and just barely made it to the next step when she stopped, and the step she'd been on before crumbled away.

She stared at him, eyes wide. Some of her hair had come out of her braids and fell across her face; it was dark and stark against her milk-white face.

"Those instincts," he said. She glared at him, but even she laughed for a second—the trap, probably meant as a test for would-be Jedi padawans, lay quiet—and the moment was broken. "That's what it feels like."

"Moving in abstract terror, not knowing if I was going to live or die!?" She snorted. "Alright. Now I know why you're as insane as you are."

Luke grinned, and snuck forwards—careful not to activate the weapons again—to jump to the step above her. "Your shielding's already excellent," he said, tone growing serious again. "You— I can teach you more later, but you're good for now. For now…"

"For now we need to get in there."

"Yes. For now, that's what we need to do."

They reached the door at the top and snuck it open, peering out.

The corridor beyond was empty, dark, with a high-arched ceiling and enough dust to make a pillow for this world. Luke cast out with his senses, and got—

— _screeching darkness, malicious satisfaction, something reaching back with a hunger that was all too bitter—_

—he flashed back into himself and gasped.

"I think we're in the right place," he gasped out.

Leia could clearly see it. "This was a bad idea."

"I'm fully aware of that." He reached for his back pocket, and touched the crystal there. It gave him warmth. "Let's go."

She rolled her eyes and they forged onwards.

Luke could feel the attention of that dark thing fixed on him, and they kept walking toward it—the corridors moving around them in a sort of vague dream. Luke and Leia locked gazes, then locked down their shields, and crept forwards.

That dark gaze moved off of them and onto something else, and Luke sighed. It wasn't relief that he was feeling.

He kept moving, and they eventually—after gaping at some truly soaring, intricate carvings and architecture—came upon the hall.

It was the nexus of the feeling. Darkness curled around every corner.

Leia put her finger to her lips and they went around the side, up into the gallery where they peered into the hall over the side.

It was a vast room, tangled with vines and choked with dirt and dust. Large bronze statues of women lined the edges, in various poses, each holding something: a dish, a lightsaber, a shield, a headdress raised to the skies. They cast dark shadows onto an already dim room, the little light from skylights filtering through to catch on the air thick with dust motes, shimmering, as…

There was an altar in the centre.

And there was someone leaning over it.

Luke crept forwards, not quite daring to lean on the banister of the gallery—it seemed like it would creak just under the weight of his gaze, let alone collapse—but staring down. It… it was the clone.

He had his helmet off, tucked under his arm, his expression twisted in shock and fear. His hand was tentatively on the altar—what it was an altar _for_ , Luke had no idea—like he'd just been investigating it, watching it, but his eyes were fixed on the far door, jaw slack and mouth wide open.

He was frozen. His greying hair shifted over his head, his lean, tan face glistening with sweat. With his armour, buffed and maintained to an impressive level considering how old it must be, he looked like an action figure more than a man.

The vines crawling over his boots said otherwise.

There were others like him in the room—humans, wearing the style of clothing popular in the village, each equally fearful and still. From the amount of plants covering them, the thick black ivy, they'd been there for years. One was totally surrounded, his outline more shaggy beast than humanoid.

Some of them felt dead in the Force—just like the ones in the forest had. Others…

_Others were still alive._

"What?" Leia whispered, mouthed, coming up beside him to stare. "What is this?"

Cold struck the Force like a chime of midnight and Luke barely _thought_ as he grabbed Leia and shoved her back, clamping down on their presences tightly, peering through a spot of the banister cloaked in hanging plants.

Through the door that the clone had been staring at strode a figure.

It was a massive creature—tall and broad, easily taller than Vader, and humanoid in shape. Its hair was long, dark and matted, trailing behind it on the ground and catching on twigs; it wore robes that may have once been green, but seemed far too soiled or filthy to ever have been a colour at all.

It spread its arms and Luke noticed the long, wicked claws that stretched from its appendages.

He gritted his teeth. Held his breath. Leia's eyes were wide as they watched it stalk forwards, circle the clone with a scouring gaze, before turning away from the altar. It stopped in front of one of the villagers: a young man, with short, sandy hair and a holocam frozen in his hands.

He was one of the ones that was still alive.

But then the creature laid a hand on his shoulder and he was alive no more.

Luke let out a choked gasp as he felt it—the darkness speared through the temple, the air, to strike its target, and _sucked_ , like a parasite or vampire. The glimmering presence in the Force writhed and shrieked, shattering and restitching itself and shattering again against the pull, and crumb by agonising crumb…

There was no visible change to the man's outward appearance.

But he was gone.

He was a statue.

He had never been alive at all.

What did that mean? What _was_ that, to cut off access and existence in the Force altogether? What did that mean for the soul, for luminous beings, for the fabric of the galaxy that everything penetrated—

The Force vampire stamped away and Luke's eyes fluttered closed; he took short, sharp breaths.

What was that?

What had it done to that man—to the people-statues here, to the statues in the forest?

_What was it going to do to—_

"Luke," Leia hissed. Her eyes were still open, he saw when he opened his, and when he turned them on the horrible scene below…

The Force rang, reverberated, with… _something_. Some compulsion, and Luke half-stood to beam, to run, to present himself before that vampire with its bright ivory smile and do whatever it told him to do, because it was power, it was might, and that meant it must be right for an ant like him to serve…

He got a grip on himself just as one of the other great doors to that beautiful, rotting hall burst open, and the woman from earlier burst in.

Her twig creatures swarmed around her, supporting her still, even as she strode for the vampire and the dais like… well, a woman possessed.

The vampire stood there and turned to her, that smile widening. She wove in between the array of statues, and then…

It stepped forward, to place a palm on her head. The claws rested around her temple like a crown, pressing hard, drawing blood.

The Force swelled and the woman screamed.

Luke _stared_. She doubled over, on her knees in front of that large creature, the inexorable hand still on her head even as… she changed. Her head was no longer a head, or a mane; it was shimmering, translucent, there one blink then gone the next…

Her limbs crackled and thrashed, growing, changing and disappearing with the winds. Spikes ripped and rippled out of her back, writhing with her every motion; she threw her chin back, gazing at the sky as a last, weak cry for help fled her throat—

Her eyes swirled into massive, empty things, reflections of darkness and the hideous creature above her, and her mouth vanished to a whisper of light.

Her twigs crumpled to black compost around her.

Leia whispered, "He made her one of _them_."

Luke nodded slowly.

"I… I turned that Ghost into one of those women," she said. "That thing… that's what changed them in the first place?"

"I think so," he replied softly, eyes riveted to the sight. She was on the floor, whimpering, squirming in her new form—then the Vampire leant down to whisper something to her.

She stilled.

Rose off the ground.

And then she snapped her head around to stare at them.

Luke barely shut his eyes in time. The squeal in the Force, like burning metal, nearly bowled him over anyway. He could sense the Ghost's approach, sense the Vampire's vicious victory, sense…

Sense that _summons_ again, to every such horrid creature in the temple, and sought out Leia's hand.

The Ghost _screamed_.

Luke was expecting it, this time—he held onto his shields, his strength, _Leia's hand_ —but his knees still buckled and he still crashed to the floor. Hot blood dripped from… from his _ears_ … and he could hear Leia's pained pants as well.

He was shivering, shuddering, the cold wrapping around him and nearly freezing him. He remembered Hoth, he remembered the cave and the wampa and the snow, and he tried to move his limbs again before they froze forever, he _did not want to die like this_ —

The Vampire's metaphysical command was so forceful that every person in a hundred klick radius, Force-sensitive or not, must have heard it.

**_Hunt them._ **

Leia dragged herself to her feet, dragged Luke with her, and they fled into the temple. Running, running, _running_ —

They sprinted past a window, a door, an old broken clock that nonetheless had both hands pointed at twelve, the time it must have been about now. The sun had set hours ago, time was blurring between today and tomorrow, if tomorrow would ever exist, if they would live to see it, and—

As they released each other to clap their hands over their ears in an empty corridor, distant screams of suffering and torment echoing through the walls, they were hunted.


	5. Day 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke builds a lightsaber, both he and Leia give their final fight for survival, and Vader insists on complicating things as always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to [zoryany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoryany/pseuds/zoryany) as always for her excellent betaing!

They ran, and ran, until they found some dusty, abandoned wardrobe in the temple and hid in there, still shaking, shields as tight as they could go.

Luke nearly collapsed into that wardrobe, drawing the door closed behind him; Leia managed to catch herself before she fell on top of him. They kept the doors tightly closed and locked down their shields just as tightly—Leia was naturally excellent at this, he noted; no wonder no one had noticed her Force sensitivity until it had been activated, no wonder she always seemed so collected—and panted in the ringing silence, shivering.

"Perhaps we shouldn't have come," Luke conceded, his voice trembling.

Leia let out a quiet laugh. "Perhaps not," she said. "Our ambitions were noble."

"Noble and _stupid_."

"This is— this is _karked_ ," Leia said. Luke blinked at the swear word, squinting at her in the dark. "That _thing_ —what _was_ that?"

"I don't know," Luke said honestly. "But I think… I think we've found out, for sure, why those villagers never want to come into the woods."

Leia snorted. "No kidding." Her arms came up to wrap around herself. "It's so cold here."

"That's the dark side. I… think that vampire-thing uses it, in order to consume the Force in someone's body—consume it so thoroughly they're just… gone."

Leia asked, "That's what Vader uses?"

Luke gritted his teeth. "The dark side—yes. I don't think Vader uses the dark side for _this_ specific purpose, but he certainly uses it."

"Perhaps that was why he dealt with that Ghost's paralysing effects better than the troopers did. He _is_ the dark side, so it can't hurt him."

"No," Luke said thoughtfully. "I don't think so. If… if he _was_ the dark side, he wouldn't have been beaten by it. He's…"

Leia looked at him, unblinking.

"He's my father," he said, with difficulty, but… he had to be brave, in facing it.

He couldn't run from it any longer.

Not when running from it had led him—and, more importantly, _Leia_ —here.

"He's my father," he said again, faster this time, too quick for him to take it back. "He's not… _the dark side_. He's a man. I threw dirt at his mask."

Leia laughed harshly. "Yeah—that was a great moment."

"It felt great." It felt like staring a threat in the face and saying _kriff you._ It felt like proving he was bigger than he thought he was—stronger, more powerful—and his fear was smaller.

It felt like staring through Leia's eyes as she lashed out a hand and turned a monster into a maiden.

It felt like being brave.

"We need to fight that… thing," he said.

Leia gaped at him. _"What?_ Luke, the only thing we need to do is get out of here—"

"I know."

"We can't take that thing on alone, you've seen it! A single Ghost nearly killed you! And now you want to—"

"We won't be alone. We'll have each other." He took her hands and squeezed them. "I… it's easier to be brave that way."

"Well, _yes_. So we should be brave, and make a run for it when we feel the time is right, and try to escape these woods while we still can. That thing is unbeatable, we don't _understand it_ —"

"We thought Vader was unbeatable. We didn't understand him. And now he's frozen in the woods, dirt on his mask." Well, he was probably unfrozen by now, if the effect had worn off on him the way it had on Luke, which… something told him it had. But the point remained.

Vader had been beaten.

"Vader was beaten by _this thing_ , not us. We need to _go_ —we need to _live_."

"We will try to go. We will try to escape. But that thing is going to come for us before we get to the door, isn't it?"

Leia couldn't deny that.

"You were the one who told me to be brave, Leia."

"Not _stupid_!"

"Have you met me?"

She tossed her head back and _cackled_ at that; it sounded like there was an edge of madness to her voice. Luke waited for it to abate.

"Why do we always get into these situations?" she asked. "Why— _why_ is it always us getting dragged into stupid Force-related incidents, stupid peril, all sorts of ridiculously fatal situations that only a miracle can solve?"

"Because we tend to have an abundance of miracles on hand."

"Well, kriff that! Perhaps I should let that stupid vampire come in here and—"

"That doesn't sound like the Leia Organa I know."

She paused. Lifted her chin. Tears rolled from her eyes, down her cheeks to drip off her chin.

"No," she whispered, "it doesn't."

"We can run if you want," he offered. He… didn't know what else to offer, besides his comfort and presence.

She shook her head. "I know you're right. I know that we can't. I know that we _shouldn't have come to this place in the first place_." She put a hand on her mouth. "Han wasn't even here."

The words sent a pang through his chest. Han… they had done this for Han.

Leia had put so much work into rescuing Han.

And it had only landed them here.

"We will survive. We will survive, because we need to. In order to save him."

"I wish we didn't have to save him at all!" she snapped back. "I— it's all been _so much_ , too much. It's always been hard, fighting a Rebellion, but… For _over a year_ we've been chased from base to base, Vader hunting us in every corner, looking for you—" Luke flinched, but she didn't notice. "—and then Hoth, and Hoth was miserable but it was _safe_ , but of course we didn't get that respite, and then you vanished and Han and I were stuck on that _stupid, malfunctioning ship_ for weeks on end, only for _that_ trip to end with betrayal and Han getting shipped off to a slug in carbonite and—"

She took a deep breath.

"I'm so tired of fighting, Luke," she said. "I— I know you think I'm strong, the same way I've thought you were… But I am not. I am so, so tired, and I'm not even sure I want to fight anymore."

"You _are_ strong," he told her. "I can promise you that."

He took a deep breath. "We can find a window," he offered. "We can try to climb out of here and run, get to the outskirts of the forest in time. I'm not going to bar you from that. If you want us to leave this shavit situation behind, we will."

She sniffled. "That doesn't sound like the Luke Skywalker I know."

"War changes us all."

"So does fear." She used her thumb to wipe her face down in two, sharp motions, then lifted her chin again. "But fear doesn't always cloud reason, and… you're right. So long as we are in this forest, the creature will hunt us. We don't know the way out, and retracing our steps would take days. We would be caught, and… _consumed_ … before we ever saw sunlight again."

Luke thought about it—thought about that sensation, of everything bright and good in a person being sucked away, leaving only the shell.

_Luminous beings are we… not this crude matter._

_Luminous…_

"We have to fight," Leia said. "We always do."

"We have to fight, if we want to save Han."

"If we want to save _anyone_ ," she corrected. "If we want to save ourselves." She shook her head. "I'm sick of being afraid—I'm _done_ being afraid. I have fought all my life; I won't let this define me. That's not who I am, unless it's who I let myself be."

Luke, again, thought of his father—

Thought of his fear of him

Thought of his fear of _turning into him._

He swallowed bitterly—then felt something ease in his chest.

"Yes," he said. "That's exactly it." He squeezed her hand. "Lando… Chewie… They'll have infiltrated Tatooine by the time we get back. Han will probably be there after all. Once we get past here, it's almost over—and we'll be able to save him."

He expected a scoff, or a weak, pitying smile, but all he got was a tense look. "It's almost over?"

"Yes. It _is_." He said it for himself as much as for her. "We've just got to hold on a little longer."

She was silent for a moment, then said in a querulous voice, not without a touch of humour, "You promise?"

Luke put his arms around her like he was comforting a little sister. After a moment, she hugged him right back.

"I promise," he said calmly, and closed his eyes to stop the tears from falling.

She sniffed again, drew back, and wiped her face one last time.

"Then what's your plan?" she asked abruptly. "We have one blaster each, and we know that they don't work too well against metaphysical things like the Force. How are we going to do this?"

"After the way you changed that Ghost into a woman…" he mused. "The dark is everywhere. But if we can be candles, that will hold it back long enough."

Leia had driven it off with nothing more than love.

Love, he thought to himself, was so much more than a candle.

Love could—

Leia gave him the most unimpressed look he'd ever seen. "What in the mountains' names are you talking about?"

"The dark side is pervasive, but it does its work by overwhelming you. It seeps in everywhere—it's in all of us—and the Jedi… The Jedi's greatest fight is to overcome it. That takes strength. And courage, and faith, and hope, and… _light_." He took a deep breath. "You were protecting me. You used your love and righteousness and courage to drive the darkness back, and keep back the Ghost. We just… need to do that again." His lips quirked. "Think we can do that?"

Leia smiled. "I think I can get up the will to protect you again, yeah." She bumped him on the shoulder. "Love, righteousness. Got it."

"And hope," he reminded her. Her face fell again.

Then she nodded.

"Hope is like the sun," she said. "If you only believe in it when you can see it…"

He finished the Alderaanian phrase—she'd quoted it often before. "You'll never make it through the night."

She laughed. "We're going to die, Luke Skywalker."

He shrugged lightly. "Then I'll die an optimistic fool."

"Same as ever, then."

He reached out to squeeze her hand. "I love you."

"I know. And I love you."

"I know that too." He let go. "We're going to be alright." He glanced down at his pack, reached back… and drew the kyber crystal out of his pocket.

Leia stared at it.

"You said they powered the Jedi's lightsabers," she said slowly. "Are you…?"

He opened his pack and picked out the parts he'd collected, all assembled together in a rough hilt. He took the kyber crystal between thumb and forefinger, took the hilt in his other hand, and said, "What I'm about to do will make us a beacon. Get ready to run."

"Beacons are bright," she replied. "They were the main form of communication in war time on Alderaan, millennia ago. They let surrounding bases know that they were still alive."

Luke smiled, and nodded.

Then he closed his eyes and plunged into the Force.

It was as dark and stifling as ever, but Luke pushed that back—like pushing aside a veil that had been a wall only moments ago. He was enough light to see by, and he revelled in it; he could sense every Ghost, every statue-person, every insect… and he could sense the vampire hunting them.

The vampire didn't hunt. It let the Ghosts do that for it. Hopefully that was a good sign.

In Luke's left hand, the lightsaber hilt fractured into its pieces even as he sensed the attention of every creature in the universe latch onto him.

Including, he felt with a quiet epiphany called victory, his father.

_Luke…_ came the call.

_Are you unfrozen?_ he asked calmly in response. He lifted his right hand as the kyber crystal soared out of it, hovering like a little star, blinding in the dark of the wardrobe.

_Yes. I am coming for you._ It held none of the usual menace—or perhaps that was Luke's newfound confidence speaking. Or perhaps it was because he no longer feared him.

_Stay safe,_ Vader continued, and no—the menace was certainly lacking. His mental voice rang with uncertainty, chimed with fear and pain.

No wonder the dark side had as much of a grip on him as it did.

Luke moved his hands closer, and linked his fingers together when they met. It felt like there should be some sort of noise when the kyber slotted into its place, a sweet note that played gently, gently, then reverberated out in a quiet hum, but there was none. Just the click of parts, and the whir of screws spinning as he closed it again…

As he closed it, it dropped into his hand. He caught it neatly.

The Ghosts were right outside.

He opened his eyes. Leia was watching him in… not awe; _pride_. A smile teased her lips.

"They're here," she said. "Are we ready?"

He nodded at her. "As we'll ever be."

Then he threw himself to his feet, kicked the door open, and lit the lightsaber with a blaze.

He didn't see the colour until he slashed at the first Ghost who barrelled for him, his eyes half-closed and unfocused, his mind lost in the dizzying currents of the Force. It buzzed green, vivid green—the colour of spring grass and healthy leaves, with the white of bright sunlight overhead.

There was no reason to think that a lightsaber would do any good against these Ghosts. Vader had fought them. Vader had tried—and his saber had scythed right through them without so much as a scratch.

But Luke's lightsaber—a sabre of light—connected.

The Ghost gasped, though it didn't need to breathe; it found the feet to stumble back and stare, grasping at its body that had become so inconveniently corporeal, burnt and broken crude matter. Luke watched as it fell… and watched it transform along the way.

A woman hit the ground, hair wreathed in wilting white flowers, her expression one of shocked relief.

He swallowed, regret suddenly crushing and bursting in his chest, but he turned and whirled on the others once more.

They weren't nearly as confident this time. He looked right into their wide, dark eyes—fear surged in him, threatened to overwhelm, threatened to drown and freeze like he'd fallen into an icy cavern on Hoth full of snow, but _no_ , he pushed it back—and strode forwards.

They had only the power he gave them.

They could do nothing to him that he did not do to himself.

He sliced through one, two, more and more regret rearing up as he saw the women fall. They had not chosen this existence, they had been kind and dedicated servants of this forest and planet, well-thought of by the town… But if they could not survive the transformation Leia had inflicted, he did not think there was a way to save them so they lived.

That was how the nature of this twisted curse worked it seemed.

He wished more than anything that it was otherwise.

A flash in the corner of his eye made him flinch, glance at Leia—a Ghost had shot for her, thinking she was an easy target, and managed to rake her claws in shallow slices over her torso before she grabbed its wrist and _stared_ into its eyes, her face crumpling into something agonisingly sympathetic. The Ghost jerked back, utterly unaware of how to deal with that, then—

When it did stumble back, it changed. Leia kept holding on, touched the woman's face gently, kept _pulsing_ compassion and sympathy and hope for redemption, until the woman fell.

She was still breathing, Luke noticed.

She— _she was still alive._

_She had survived._

His mouth fell open, and he met the next attacker with something… decidedly not fatal. The Ghost slashed at him with claws; he blocked the attack with his saber, slicing off some of those long, awful claws, then speared it forwards, to take off some of the Ghost's spikes. There was a howl, it collapsed to the ground, but when it flexed its clawless hands they were changing, it rolled out the way—

He tapped the next one on each shoulder, like he was knighting them. He felt farcical, ridiculous—he was no knight himself—but it _worked_.

The weapon of a Jedi was not meant to kill.

It was meant to protect.

It was meant to _save_.

The first batch of Ghosts had fled by then, cleared the room. He exchanged a grim look with Leia; her blaster was out and pointed with one hand, her other hand flexed, her face splattered in blood, but she set her jaw and half-grinned, half-grimaced.

"For Han," he reminded her.

"For _us_ ," she riposted.

When they stepped into the corridor, Luke noticed with awe that the deadened, twisted plants were… nicer.

He slashed through the ones nearest the window; they curled back, tips blackened, even as every other leaf shone greener and greener with every passing moment. The light streamed in.

And that glanced out the broad, domed window… it overlooked the front gate.

It overlooked the Sith Lord who strode towards it.

_Where are you?_ Vader sent.

Luke rolled his eyes. _If you can't tell, I'd be disappointed. And I don't have much incentive to invite you in._ Fear or not, father or not— _possibility for redemption_ now… niggling at the back of his brain, with everything he'd experienced in the last hour, or not—he was not going to suffer—

_I will not see you hurt!_ Vader thundered. He paused at the gate, tilted his helmet up to see Luke from the window… then strode even faster for the door.

Luke blinked at the vehemence in his tone. _You… what—_

_I_ said _—_

"Luke!" Leia shouted.

He spun around as more Ghosts came—how many were there? How many had the Vampire turned? Was it the whole order, all the ladies of the forest?—and missed his father's reply.

Missed his father's _alarm_ as they swarmed Luke, teeth gnashing, claws ripping, snarling—

One gouged tears in his arm before he could get his lightsaber between them, watching how it hissed, shifted into translucence, shied away from the light. He plunged the saber forwards; they screeched and scattered, shimmering between humanity and monstrosity with every time the tip pierced their skin…

_Luke!_

_I am handling this. I—_

_I will not see you die like your mother did,_ Vader growled, and then the connection was cut off abruptly; Luke could sense his resolve, lack of patience, as he strode into the temple and towards him.

Luke, for a moment, marvelled at the change.

In Vader, and in himself.

_I'm not going to die,_ he shot back—then couldn't resist adding, a little bitterly— _and it's not like your actions have ever_ prevented _the possibility of me dying._

_I have done everything to protect you!_

_You,_ Luke scythed his saber through a Ghost's spines; he winced at the roar, and desperately hoped that the women wouldn't be too injured if she managed to fully recover from the transformation, _have done a shit job of it!_

_I—_

Luke didn't bother to reply, or listen to his squawked and babbled protests; he swung his saber at the next Ghost who attacked, swerving it in front of it as it hissed like a Loth-cat.

It fell to the ground just as Luke turned to see Leia fistfight a Ghost, shoving her back with a ferocity even he'd rarely seen from her. She bared her teeth in a grin at him.

"Let's head back down," she said. "Let's go find that Vampire."

* * *

More and more Ghosts came at them as they descended the stairs, but Luke fought them off.

He tossed his saber to Leia and watched her cut through them like they were grass, or glass, as they tumbled down the stairs and came to a groaning halt. Leia tossed it back to him in a smooth motion; he caught it just as smoothly, like they'd been fighting together their whole lives, and then they were back in the horrible hall, with all those statues, and—

The Vampire was not here.

No one was here.

No one except the statues, and the statues…

"Quick," Luke said. "Before more of those Ghosts come—before that creature gets back to do that draining thing again. We need to release them."

Leia walked in a circle around one of the older statues, shaggy with ivy. "Pass me your lightsaber?"

He tossed it to her.

The violent _hiss_ surprised him slightly, as did her fierce neon slash, but then ivy shucked to the floor like water off a breaking wave, and…

The woman groaned, collapsing to the floor.

Luke and Leia exchanged a glance. "Give me that back."

He caught it when she tossed it; two quick slashes liberated the nearest statue from the ivy, heating the skin, burning it slightly… There was a sharp gasp, and a _scream_ ; Luke jumped back to cover his ears.

The young woman blinked eyes that had been dry for days, weeks, months, and stared at him with them. "What—"

He moved onto the next.

And the next.

And the—

"What," a voice thundered from the door, "are you doing here?"

Leia almost _growled_ , grasping her blaster and spinning round to shoot at Vader, but he blocked the blasts with a dismissive wave of his hand and stormed right for Luke, seizing him by the wrist to wrench him away.

"What is the _meaning_ of this?"

Luke tilted his head back to glare at his father—then faltered. His breathing stuttered, his heart raced… but Vader seemed to notice.

He relaxed his grip on his arm, though it was still tight. "Well?" he said again, his voice still low and furious, " _What are you doing here?_ "

But Luke just wrenched his arm away and lifted his chin. "Helping people," he said.

" _Helping_ people?"

Behind him, one of the freed statues shrieked and fainted. They collapsed to the floor with a thud.

"Yes," Luke said stubbornly. " _Helping_. Are you familiar with the concept?"

"Am I familiar with the—!?" Vader took a step forward. "This place _reeks_ of danger—this whole _forest_ reeks of danger—and _you ran right into it_ —"

"Yeah." Luke clenched his jaw, chin still high and proud. "And who was I running from? Who chased me here?"

"I _told you_ to come with me."

"And you chased me for it. Shot at me." He pointed a finger at him. "You _made me terrified of you_."

It was Luke's fear, but Vader was at fault.

Vader was at fault for _everything_.

He jabbed his finger in his chest twice. "If I had died in here…"

The breathing from the vocoder stumbled for a moment, Vader's silence speaking louder than words.

Then he reached out to take Luke's waving hand and clasp it, gently, fanning out his fingers between his. Luke was so shocked by the motion he tensed up.

Leia, knelt on the floor beside the poor person who'd fainted, stared.

"It would have been my fault," Vader finished, his breaths wheezing. "I know. That… that is what I saw."

For a moment, Luke wondered what the Ghost actually _did_.

If it trapped you in fear, forced you to relive awful memories, dotted beacons for the hungry dark side scattered everywhere in the forest.

But what did that mean, that Vader had been seeing… him?

What— what did that _imply_ about his _father_ —

For a moment, looking up into that hated, feared mask, still smeared with mud… Vader seemed almost frail.

As frail as any other human being.

"Father," Luke said, and his voice was shaking. Vader jerked his head down, staring at him, at the sound of _that word_. "Are you—"

The dark billowed through the hall like a freezing wind.

Luke jerked back, his hand slipping out of Vader's with a chime of sadness in the Force that didn't feel like his own. He reached for his lightsaber, looking around…

And there was the Vampire.

It approached, with all its monstrous height—taller than Vader!—and half-smiled, half-snarled at them all, sharp teeth bared. Its hair dragged behind it, its robes lending to its impression of a big, hulking _mass_ , and…

And it was _furious_.

He raised his lightsaber.

"Luke, look out!"

And a Ghost rammed into him from behind.

He shouted out, claws digging deep into his back; his lightsaber clattered across the floor to nestle in a thick patch of filth. He hit the ground with a thud.

His chin smashed down on it. Blood spurted in his mouth. He couldn't _breathe_ with the suddenly _very solid weight on his back_ —

There was a hum, and a slash—

And an inhuman snigger as Vader's saber passed right through it.

His roar sent shivers down Luke's stabbed, bloody, _aching_ back. He spat a glob of red out the corner of his mouth and tried to push himself up…

The claws disappeared from him only to rake down again; he shouted out.

Vader bellowed and held out a hand. Luke's saber flashed as it arced into it, then it swung, and…

The Ghost screamed as it was decapitated. Luke winced at the thought of the woman who died.

"Get up," Vader snapped. Luke pushed himself up with trembling arms and staggered back to his feet, rolling his shoulders. The pain flowed through him for a moment, then… he let it vanish.

It was there. It hurt.

It was not important right now.

"Give," he glared at his father and snatched the saber back, "me that."

Vader let it go only reluctantly, eyes fixed on the Vampire. It had ceased smiling now, and was— was _stalking towards them_ — "It is of fine make."

"I am so glad you approve—!"

Leia dashed forwards—a glance around showed she'd moved the freed statues _out of the room, out of the way_ ; good—and took aim with her blaster.

And shot.

One shot, two shots, three shots—

The first one missed, narrowly. The second one, the Vampire suddenly dived aside with a terrifying speed; the third it caught out of mid-air entirely.

Leia stared. "What," she said, "the—"

The Vampire leapt forwards, seized her by the arm and—

The _crack_ made Luke sick to his stomach.

"Don't touch her!" he yelled, and ran forwards. His lightsaber lit halfway; the Vampire lashed around from where it was leaning over Leia, crumpled to the floor. She tried to grasp for her blaster with her other arm, even if her mouth was still occupied with a wrenching, strangled scream, shot—

She missed entirely. It scuffed one of the stained-glass windows, high ahead, charring the emerald leaf-pattern.

The Vampire kicked her dismissively—not too hard. That was an insult in itself.

Luke planted his feet and _swung_.

His saber connected with the Vampire's shoulder, shearing off a massive chunk of tissue, muscle, blood spurting; he tried not to look at it as it hit the ground. It stumbled back, hissing and snarling, amber eyes glaring at him.

Luke struck again but it moved quicker this time, spinning out the way, nearly slipping on Leia's dropped blaster.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vader rocket forwards, cape fanning out, arm outstretched in a fist. The way the darkness _lashed_ was almost physical; Luke shuddered and stumbled back, shaking his head violently, trying to clear the screams from his head and the ways he was wracked with shudders—

The Vampire shook it off easily and laughed.

It lunged.

It was clumsy, but Luke was clumsier—Leia was _right next to him_ , and he was hyperaware of the way she seemed to scramble right under their feet, so he tripped and felt those claws scour across his torso, _deep_. Blood spattered from his rib to the Vampire's face; that _thing_ licked its lips, eyes seeming to glow with satisfaction.

Luke could barely breathe without pain, every inch of him stinging and screaming. At least Leia had rolled away, though not nearly far enough away to be safe, pale and sweaty and shuddering, her broken arm clutched tight to her chest. She glared at the creature, flung out a hand—

And Luke had _no idea_ how she did it.

Had _no idea_ where she'd learnt it—by watching him?

Had _no idea_ how she'd picked it up so quickly, or if it was a matter of panic, adrenaline, the heat of the moment, or even that surge of protectiveness that had turned a monster into a mortal the other day—

—but she flung out a grasping hand, her left hand, and the blaster flew into it as neatly as a bullet flew out of a slugthrower.

She levelled it and fired.

The first shot connected with the Vampire's shoulder; it snarled, turned to her, and then she shot at its legs. The bolt scorched a hole right through its shin and it staggered as the thing near-shattered underneath it.

She fired off a thousand other shots, but—injured or not, it was _fast._ It limped out the way, out the way again, and _she couldn't hit it._

So she threw the blaster.

It was a good shot: it collided with its already injured leg, it stumbled, and—

Luke threw himself at the Vampire, _tackling it_ like it was one of his Rogues about to make a supremely bad decision. They both went down hard, his spine _shouting_ with pain. His lightsaber skittered away and he grabbed for it, seizing it with the Force and whipping it back into his hand, lit and ready—

It sliced off the Vampire's left limb as it fell in his grip; the thing _screamed_ , right in his face, spittle smacking him on the cheek, nose, forehead. Luke raised his hand and blade.

Only for its good leg to meet his tattered chest with a _thump_ and send him flying off, metres and metres away, straight into one of the frozen-but-dead statues. The ivy somewhat cushioned his fall, even as he thought his back would break against the body, and he _hated_ the sound of the—albeit, _thankfully_ , already drained—statue snapping in two with the force of the throw. He rolled off it and tried to get back up, legs wobbling underneath him.

There was a tug at his lightsaber. He shot his father, striding forwards, a look—"Get your own!"

"My saber is clearly no good against these creatures!" came the thundered response. "Nor is the dark side!"

"It's like fighting fire with fire!"

_"Precisely!_ So give me your lightsaber so I can enact true _suffering_ on this piece of filth—"

The Vampire lunged, then.

Not for the Sith Lord—its kin, its ally in darkness, the mirror that was no threat to a monster—but for Luke.

Luke was already unstable on his feet; he could do nothing but brace himself as it swept forward, claws driving deep into his belly, so deep he felt… he didn't know but it _hurt_ , and he unleashed a choked gasp as tears mingled with the blood on his cheeks. It ripped them back out again with equal relish, blood puttering from the wound like misfiring shots, coating its fingers and—

It smiled as it sensed his pain, his despair, and…

_He felt it._

The darkness that folded around him gently, like an angel's blackened wings, was soft and cool. There was nothing but static and white static, and against his will he relaxed as he felt the Vampire's grip on him shift, its immense satisfaction… somehow his own, as it surveyed what a prize this Force-sensitive was, how much there was to corrupt, how much there was to consume, if only it could make the choice to decide which would be better…

Corrupt, it decided; after the fight it had put up, there would be nothing sweeter but to set the newly-turned on the shadow, on the vicious little girl on the floor, and watch it freeze them in the very terrors it tried to protect them from, bowing to and obeying only one master in the nature of the darkness… the prospect of this amount of power serving the darkness's appetite and delivering it even more mortals to feast upon…

As the static in his head turned to screams, he was barely aware of his numb fingers releasing his lightsaber to let it roll, as he tilted his head back, the Vampire placed its large, smothering hand on it and _shoved_ —

And for one, blissful moment, there was nothing.

No blood.

No pain.

No Venaira, or Force, or suffering…

No father or sister—sister?—frantically shouting _Luke!_

_Luke!_

_Luke!_

**_Luke._ **

**_You are nothing._ **

**_You are darkness._ **

**_You are fear._ **

**_You are suffering, and you are nothing but suffering—_ **

He writhed in the grip, and then _with_ the grip; each of his cuts and injuries bled fire from his body as the fire raced through his veins, threatening to burst out of him, turn him to smoke and ash—

To turn him into _a ghost_ —

Something rippled under his back—where the claws had dug in, had scoured holes, something stirred, ready to burst forth—

**_You are afraid._ **

Yes I am.

**_You are angry._ **

Yes I am.

**_You are darkness—_ **

I—

A hiss, an image of a father and a monster, with bright yellow eyes and a blade of crimson fire—

Yes, he thought, staring unseeing, I am.

The Vampire leaned in so close its cold, lifeless breath ghosted over his skin.

**_You are mine._ **

No.

The screaming stilled to static again.

Then it returned, in greater force, and he flinched back in a tight clawed grip that pricked blood from his wrists and shoulders and scalp, and growled, **_You are mine!_**

No.

I am _not_.

And then there was a howl.

The screaming in his head vanished. There was only physical screaming, screaming that scraped and shattered against his eardrums, and only when he realised how much his throat hurt did he realise it was his.

He stopped.

He— he shook.

Blood seeped from every orifice. From every hole, every slash, every puncture. He couldn't stand—

He fell, and Leia caught him with her left arm, grunting as he dragged her down and jostled her right.

But there was still screaming.

The Vampire. The Vampire, the _thing_ that had tried to— tried to enslave him the way it had those poor women, had tried to change, corrupt him, physically command him… It was shrieking in Vader's grip, Luke's lightsaber carving it into rapid pieces one by one by one in quick inexorable succession.

"Don't you _dare_ ," Vader snarled, "touch my son."

He ripped the lightsaber out of the Vampire's chest, and it fell to the ground in pale, sad pieces.

Luke tried not to look at it.

Instead, he collapsed out of Leia's arms.

Crawled to the nearest patch of ivy, and vomited his guts up.

His arms were shaking. His body was shaking. _Everything_ was _shaking_ , and he still felt like a ghost, he still felt like he was going to evaporate into translucency any moment, like there were— there were _spines_ and _spikes_ ready to erupt from his back at the slightest touch of the dark and turn him into something hideous—

"Luke?"

Leia put a hand on his beaten back, as soft and careful with the comforting touch as she had been the day Ben Kenobi had died.

"Luke, are you…" A sigh snorted out of her, the irony in her voice evident to even his ringing ears. "Obviously you're not alright. You—"

"It tried to _change me_ ," Luke choked out, then was sick some more, spluttering on his own bile. Heat rose in his cheeks, behind his eyes. "It tried— it was going to _turn me into a Ghost_ , into one of those _monsters—_ It _said—_ "

"It failed," she said, clutching his shoulder. It hurt, but the pain anchored him to her touch. "You're— you're here. You'll be alright. We'll _help you_ —"

"You are not a monster, Luke," a voice rumbled. Not the voice he'd expected; he'd… almost forgotten Vader was still standing there over the Vampire's corpse, gazing at him with nothing more than melancholy. His lightsaber still hummed in his hand. "No master can make you a monster, unless you choose to embrace it."

_You are mine._

_No. I am not._

"Like you did?" Luke spat. For a moment he thought he'd be sick again, but he wasn't; he had nothing left to puke. He just sat back, shaking, sweat pouring down his battered, abused body.

Vader inclined his head. "Like I did." His voice was miserable… then…

He took a step forward. Deactivated the lightsaber. Offered it to Luke, the hilt gleaming in the dim light.

"But I can still choose to turn back, it seems," he said. "For the right motivation."

Again, Luke had to wonder exactly what his father had seen in that vision.

Leia hissed at him, "I don't trust you."

"As you should not, Princess." Vader's tone was barbed. "I care not for your Rebellion, or if _you_ trust me. All I care about…" He looked at Luke. "Is my son."

Tears streamed down his cheeks again, but it wasn't from the pain.

"Leia," he gasped out. "Do we have any bandages?"

Leia frowned, nodding at their pack—she'd put it to the side when she'd been ushering the civilians out. Civilians who were now peeking back in through the doors, staring at them.

"Excuse me?" Luke called to one of them. They flinched back; he wondered just how sorry a sight he was, covered in blood, filth and dust as he was. "By any chance is one of you a medic?"

The older woman stepped forward. "I am," she said—glanced at Vader, then Leia, then Luke, but steeled her nerve. "If you have supplies, I…" She shivered. Luke didn't want to imagine what endless torment they'd just released _her_ from. "I can help."

"Thank you," Leia said. "Please—my friend is bleeding, he—"

"Just a moment," Luke said. And he held out his hand to Vader.

Vader took it, to help him up. Luke gave him a surprised look, but let him, then put the hand out again.

"My saber," he prompted.

Vader's sense in the Force was not _embarrassment_ , but it was amusingly close to it.

Luke took his saber when it was offered, and limped towards the nearest statue.

He raised the saber high, and slashed down. The ivy crumbled to the ground.

As it did for the next one.

And the next one.

And the next one.

Whether they were still alive or not—he freed them. With every swing, his arm hurt more.

Finally, he reached the clone on the dais. The poor man was still frozen where they'd first seen him, staring at a vampire who was already dead.

Luke lifted his saber and swung.

The clone fell to his knees, coughing, clenching his fist—he jerked his gaze up at Luke, then blinked like he'd seen a ghost. Blinked, then blanched, at the light and roar of his lightsaber as he held it at his side.

"My name is Luke Skywalker," he said to the clone. "You are free."

"Skywalker, eh?" came the reply.

The clone made to say something else, then coughed, and dragged himself up to trembling feet. "It's— it's Commander Cody." He glanced around. "Glad to see that— _thing_ is dead. And I've still got my helmet…"

"Luke," Leia snapped, hand on the back of the nearest freed person. There was so much trauma in this room, Luke was nearly bowing under the weight of it. "You're done. Now get treated."

Luke tilted his head back and lifted his face to the ceiling, reaching out with the Force. With the Vampire dead, the place was already lighter, already freeing itself; he supposed that was what nature did. It survived in the face of all adversity.

But that didn't stop him from giving it a boost.

He reached out, reaching for… that core of light, inside him. The crystal in his saber, and all it represented, all he knew.

He was brave.

He was alive.

He was free.

He was _Luke Skywalker_.

Around them, the light seemed to brighten, and the plants seemed to green.

Luke opened his eyes again—and stumbled. Nearly fell, if Cody had not caught him, his legs too weak to hold him.

"Now, kid," the clone prompted. "Your friend's right."

"Now," he agreed wearily. "Medical."

* * *

The medic did her best with the medkit Leia had had—she set Leia's broken arm, cleaned and bandaged as many of Luke's wounds as possible. For the villagers, and Cody, there wasn't much physical for her to treat, though Luke was sure that Falcou's therapist would have their schedule full for years, now. If Falcou had a therapist, that was.

The medic—Minerva—had been reluctant to patch up the surviving ladies of the forest on account of not understanding supernatural oddities, but she'd examined them and reported that aside from minor burns and injuries sustained during the fight, they would recover themselves. Luke and Leia had paid off on trying to keep them alive, even if a few… had not made it after all.

"The creed will not die," she promised, and looking into her pale blue eyes, Luke wondered how long she'd been here—if she'd had friends among them, that had led her to the great hall of their temple to find why her friends had vanished. "They will survive. The forest will heal them." She glanced at his already-red bandages. "But it will not heal you. You need to get back to Falcou."

"How?" Luke asked. "We're in the middle of the forest. It took us days to walk here, we have no speeder, and no way of navigating out, either. Unless any of the locals know it well?" He addressed the question to all of them.

One man shook his head. "We know the path," he said in heavily accented Basic, "but you are right. All the speeders we brought her are rusted and destroyed—we checked them already—and… By foot it will take days to loops around this section of the forest. It's too thick to walk through, and the river is too wide and rough to cross on the other side. You have to head for the bridge."

"The bridge is no longer there anyway," Luke said bitterly.

Vader shifted awkwardly where he stood.

The man continued, "Supposedly the ladies used to get around the forest on foot through catacombs, but I've got no idea how to navigate them, or even where they are—"

"I do," Leia said.

Luke glanced sideways at her. So did the man. "You—offworlder—know how to navigate them?"

"We'll have a decent chance at it, I think," Luke added, latching onto what she was thinking. With the Vampire dead, the Force was growing clearer and clearer by the moment, like the suns rising, or light shining through a window as the veil was drawn aside. They…

They had _made it_ to the cottage, to the temple, based purely on feeling.

He was certain they could find their way out again.

He nodded.

"We're going to return through the kyber tunnels," he said. Clearly, none of them were sure what _kyber_ meant, but they got what he was talking about.

Leia added, "We are certain we will find our way, but I understand you may have your doubts. If you would rather stay here, that's more than alright. We'll return with a speeder."

Minerva glared at her arm, then at Luke's pocked torso.

"…we will send someone else to return with a speeder," Leia corrected. Minerva nodded approvingly.

Luke lifted his arms slightly. "So, who's coming?"

* * *

In the end, it was most of that ragtag group that stumbled out of the temple and into that trapdoor they'd found on the grounds the previous day, each giving the muddy steps a distasteful, slightly nervous look before they descended.

Then they were in the catacombs, and all they could do was stare.

They needed neither light nor torchbearers, not when the crystals glowed as they did, so Luke and Leia took up the front as Vader kept the back; he could feel his father's gaze, intense and worried and possessive, on his shoulders. The two just murmured quietly to each other as they walked, only exchanging the barest glance and confirmatory gesture whenever they had to make a turn, the crystalline structure of the earth this far down spiralling in a thousand different ways, a dense, complex network right across the forest.

No wonder the ladies had been attracted to this spot—this part of Venaira. The rest of the planet may have been a colourful haven, an artist's paradise… but it was this part that truly resonated with the Force. He could hear it in every song.

"Is this what the Force is?" Leia whispered to him, closing her eyes for a moment as the silver glow caressed her skin like starlight. "Is… this what it feels like."

And for a moment, Luke forgot the fog from the Vampire, the freezing uncertainty of Bespin, the chill of that cave on Dagobah. That wasn't the Force—not as it should be. He knew that.

"Yes," he said with a smile, and took her good hand.

The pounding noise echoed long ahead of them; they were still far away when they heard it. Luke frowned, tensing up—some of the villagers behind them flinched in terror—but… There was no warning from the Force. Nothing bad here.

Nothing to fear.

Still, the pounding grew louder and louder for an hour, two, until it could no longer be dismissed as a trick of the ear. It practically _roared_ when they came to a part of the tunnel that was just a slab smooth, solid crystal, unjagged by fingers of rocks or cracks or crevices.

And then Luke realised.

He tilted his head, up and back, to laugh in tune with the roaring overhead. Leia looked at him like he was mad… then she realised, and looked up, to where they both knew the river was rushing and gushing a few scant metres of rock above their heads.

"I can't believe we jumped the speeder over that," he said.

"I can't believe _you_ were insane enough to," she teased back.

He smiled, and they kept walking. The white crystals glittered.

And when they emerged on the other side, close enough to the dazzling waterfalls that Luke was _drenched_ in shimmering spray, he had to laugh.

The forest was blossoming, a thousand flowers on the trees, all the colours; vivid, rich shadows and textures in between. He could see the kyber river bed if he peered down far enough—how had he missed that before?

He laughed openly.

This planet was beautiful.

The galaxy was beautiful.

There was a long, long flight of steps up to Falcou from here—the villagers started climbing them one by one, nodding to Luke, Leia and Vader as they went. Minerva even lightly squeezed Luke's shoulder and gestured to Leia's arm, reiterating the advice she'd given them a few miles ago. Cody was perhaps the last to go, glancing over his shoulder at them the whole way.

Luke took a deep breath and eyed the stairs.

"This is gonna be awful," he said. "And I'm going to collapse at the top."

"I think there's a lift just here." Leia pointed to a thin shaft that ran beside it.

Sure enough, there was—and one of the villagers had been thoughtful enough to send it down for them once they reached the top.

They rode it up in silence, watching the falls' spray flash across the windowpane. Now that they were out of danger, now that they were in such a simply beautiful place, Luke was… hyperaware of the hulking Sith Lord at his back.

Hyperaware that he didn't know what was going to—

"I do not know what will happen now, Luke." Vader cut him off before he could ask. "Not in the long term. But I do know what will happen in the short term: you will rest in your room in the inn, as the medic ordered, and you will heal."

"I'll do that tonight," he agreed lightly. "And tomorrow."

"You had better."

"And what will you be doing?"

"Going to hell, hopefully," Leia muttered.

Vader glared at her. "I would offer you a place on the _Executor_ , where our advanced medical capacities could heal you fully," he said. Before Luke could even open his mouth to object vehemently to that, he added, "But I am aware you would have multiple objections to that."

Luke grimaced. "Yeah."

"We _would_." Leia was holding herself in check around Vader—had been for hours now, Luke could appreciate—and she vibrated like a tiny, luminous star beside him, incandescent with the amount of rage she had cooped up in her chest.

Vader ignored her. "And…" He rested a hand on Luke's cheek. "I would not want to risk you coming to the Emperor's attention more than you already have. I have seen what could happen."

"How many things did you _see_?"

"Too many!" Vader snapped. "And I _will not_ allow them to come to pass!"

He calmed down after a moment. "You are injured. You are exhausted. And you are _filthy_. I will not be discussing this with you in full until tomorrow, young one. For tonight, you will need to rest. I will not have you endangering yourself further with your recklessness."

"For once," Leia growled, "we can agree, _Lord Vader_."

Vader gave her an appreciative look, then. "You are the reason my son is alive."

She flinched at that—at his full attention fixed on her. But she met his gaze with her tried and tested glare. "I _am_. No thanks to you."

"Indeed. And many thanks to you."

Then, the lift came to a stop and Vader strode out, cape spinning.

Luke and Leia were left gaping after him as he crested the hill and vanished from sight, only a slight chill betraying he'd ever been there at all.

"Come on," Leia said at last. "Let's go get some sleep."

"It's the middle of the afternoon," Luke pointed out.

"And you will sleep, so help me, or I am throwing you in that river."

"I can't swim!"


	6. Day 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke has four important heart-to-hearts and leaves Venaira with a brighter view of the future than he had before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter!
> 
> Many thanks once again to the wonderful [zoryany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoryany/pseuds/zoryany) for betaing this whole fic, you've been amazing <3

Luke almost fell asleep in the shower—treating himself to a water one, seeing as they had an abundance of it and he did need to clean himself off _thoroughly_ —before he finally crawled into bed and passed out for sixteen hours.

He woke up bright and chipper the next morning, but not without vivid dreams.

Dagobah.

He was on Dagobah, just outside Yoda's hut—but it wasn't Yoda talking to him. It was Obi-Wan, as blue in dreamland as in the galaxy proper, and he was smiling at him sadly.

"I imagine you have a lot of questions for me," he said.

He did.

There— there were _so many questions_.

But Luke just felt quiet inside.

So he asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"About Vader?"

"What else?" he shot back. "Why… why couldn't you have just told me the truth?"

His voice cracked, even in a dream. Dagobah's humidity pressed around him, down on him; he felt trapped in his own skin.

He didn't expect Ben's response: "I was afraid."

Luke swallowed, and seated himself on a fallen tree just to the side, glancing sideways at the man who'd lied to him—the man who'd dragged him into all of this in the first place. "Afraid?"

"Yes. I… I failed Anakin. In the worst possible way—I raised him for years, I fought by him, but I could not help him when he needed me the most. I could not prevent him from falling, and becoming…"

"Vader."

Ben, though ghosts surely needed no air, took a deep breath. "Yes. Vader. I was afraid of failing you the way I failed him—and knowing how you so idolised your father even before you knew he was a Jedi…"

Luke looked away. "You thought that once I heard he was my father, I'd run off to meet him immediately."

"Would you not have?"

Luke supposed he was right on that front.

But… "Were you _ever_ going to tell me?"

Ben gave a sad smile. "You had so much anger. I… I am sorry, Luke. I saw too much of your father in you—and I mean that as a regret as much as a compliment. You are a great deal like Anakin was: kind, brave, headstrong… _stubborn to a fault_ …" He trailed off. "I did not want it to happen again."

"So you weren't going to tell me?"

"When Yoda felt it was time—that you were ready—we would have. But after the way you have behaved these last few days… we did not give you enough credit. You are not your father. You are your own person, and I am sorry I did not trust you with this."

Luke nodded. "I… see."

Tentatively, with more uncertainty than Luke had ever seen in the old hermit, Ben reached out a hand to place on his shoulder. "I know that Vader is… softening. I know what he saw, and I did not realise it would have this effect on him. I don't know what to make of him—or of his relationship to you, now that you both know."

Luke snorted and couldn't resist commenting, "That makes two of us."

"I am not going to tell you he's lost," Ben continued. "I… truly, I don't know anymore. I think you should be cautious, and extremely wary—but I do not think you should ignore him." He patted his knee. "Perhaps that's just an old fool's hope."

"It's a fool's hope, not an old fool's hope. I have it just as much."

"Then talk to your father. See what he says. The future is clouded, your path unclear—wherever you may walk, it will be easier with your father and your sister."

_Sister_. That was the second time he'd heard the word in as many days. And… Leia…

"That is a story for later," Ben said. "Come to Yoda and I on Dagobah, and we will explain everything."

For a moment, Luke was filled with the urge to ask—to _demand_ answers, to rage about even more secrets being kept from him. He was _so close!_ Why couldn't he tell him now? Why couldn't he—

Why couldn't he handle it one step at a time, as he always did?

One step at a time.

"You promise?" he asked.

"I do."

"No half-truths. No _from a certain point of view._ No twisting words."

"None, little one." Ben stood from the log. "Now, I must go, but… Give my greetings to Cody. He served with me during the war, and I have been forever grateful for it."

Luke raised his eyebrows, more and more questions crowding his tongue… but he quieted them.

They were running out of time. It was coming to an end.

There was nothing left to be asked.

"And tell him I have long forgiven him. It is time he forgave himself."

Luke blinked. "Alright. What now?"

He wasn't sure what he was asking about—what he needed to know now. There was so much he _didn't_ know, so much still up in the air, about where to proceed. He'd been lost before he ever got lost in the woods, and though he'd found himself out of _that_ trouble, the galaxy _was_ trouble.

He hadn't expected it to be any different when he emerged, and it wasn't.

But _he was_.

"Now," Obi-Wan Kenobi said with a noble smile and a held-out-hand, "you wake up."

* * *

When he woke, the questions had not left him, even with the sun climbing the sky through the window and the clump of trees in the valley clustering in a homely manner. He staggered out of the bed, careful not to disturb Leia—she was still fast asleep—and changed his bandages in the bathroom, pulled on some clothes, his poncho, before he kept staggering, out of the door, into the rest of the inn.

He grabbed some breakfast from the tavern and smiled at Martha when she continued to give him—and his many, many bandages—a cautious look while she cleaned a glass. Seeing her face as he and Leia had dragged themselves in here the previous afternoon, sans speeder and their bodies matted with blood, had been a treat; it seemed the wind had changed as she stared at them, because she was still wearing the precise same expression as before.

After he had finished eating the porridge she'd sloughed into his plate—it was tastier than the rations he got, certainly, and only slightly worse than some of the fare they'd got on the farm when Aunt Beru had been too busy working to cook up her wonders—he thanked her with a smile and headed back up the stairs.

Not to their room; Leia was still asleep. He could sense that.

But in the room next to theirs, he could also sense the clone—Cody—pacing fiercely, back straight, his mind running a thousand miles a minute.

Luke didn't bother quietening his footsteps as he approached. Leia wouldn't hear him, he was fairly sure, and he wanted Cody to hear him coming. He reached the door quickly, raised his hand to knock—

And the door was opened before he even made contact.

"Skywalker," Cody greeted. The man looked like he hadn't slept a wink. His closely-cropped hair was almost all white, his eyes had such dark shadows around them he looked like a raccoon and his hands, folded tightly at his stiff-straight back, trembled a little.

"Commander Cody," Luke returned with an incline to his head. Vader had called him _commander_ , at least, so he hoped that was the correct title. "Please, just call me Luke."

"Then I'm just Cody. I'm not a commander anymore. I betrayed the Imperial army."

Luke tried to hide the way his eyes widened, but didn't quite manage it. "Betrayed? How? Why?"

"Desertion. I…" He stepped aside to let Luke into the room further, then… awkwardly waved for him to sit down. The room was identical to Luke and Leia's, with a double bed, a chair and a bathroom all cramped together, so Luke just perched on the chair. "What do you know about Order Sixty-Six, Luke?"

"Nothing."

Cody shivered. "Well, once… once I was in my right capacity. Had my mental faculties right… It didn't sit right with me. I left. Been looking for a friend of mine for a while, heard he was fighting with the Rebels, but—"

"I'm a Rebel Commander," Luke offered. "Perhaps I've heard of him?"

Cody blinked. "You're— a— I see, sir." Luke winced at the immediate _sir_. "Then I'll ask you about him later. But long story short, what they did to the clones, to the Jedi—I didn't like that. At all. So when they tried to transfer us and we all knew that a lot of us old stock would just be decommissioned and used as cannon fodder, I left. Travelled the galaxy for a long time trying to figure out what to do—trying to find Rex. Didn't work."

He shrugged. "I… needed to try to find an old friend. There was no body; I knew he couldn't be dead. I ended up on Venaira, heard about the trouble in the woods, and thought… If General Kenobi would be anywhere in as miserable a galaxy as this, it would be on the front lines fighting the dark side. So whether or not he was here, I had to go and try to fight it for him."

"I spoke to him," Luke said softly.

Cody snapped his head down to stare at Luke. "What?"

"I spoke to him. In… in a dream. Old Ben—Obi-Wan—was hiding on Tatooine, watching over and protecting me, until he died a few years ago. But he can still use the Force to come back as a ghost sometimes, and I spoke to him last night." He gentled his voice. "He said that he forgives you—and that you need to forgive yourself."

Cody stared at him. "Do you know what that means?"

"No. Do you?"

"Yes…" He shook his head. "And it's exactly the sort of thing that _hypocrite_ would say." The word was said with the utmost fondness.

After a moment of silence, Luke prompted, "Could you tell me anything about the woods? About… what happened? What happened to _you_? You don't need to describe it—" he interjected when he saw the look on the man's face. "—you don't need to go into detail, or feelings, or anything; I understand, and I understand you don't want to share. But in terms of _what happened here_ —"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you with any certainty." He grimaced. "But from what I heard before I went in… And I had the cottage in the woods there to survey the place for a while and try to figure out what was going on, I learned a lot, though I've got no idea why I didn't land myself in hot water earlier—"

Luke offered, "Your shielding is excellent. Perhaps they just couldn't find you." Cody's shields, now he was conscious and rested, could have withstood a thousand batteries. Perhaps Ben had taught him—perhaps it had been common during the Clone Wars.

"Heh. Yeah, maybe. Think the cottage was also an old thing built by the ladies themselves—something supernatural about it. But…" His brow creased again. "There were the ladies of the forest. Jedi-like people, except they weren't the Jedi—probably something like those witches from Dathomir, except… light—who were generally well-liked. Stuck to the forest, traded with the town, kept themselves to themselves and didn't complain as the rest of the planet got turned into a holiday resort for rich, artistic Core worlders. They practiced their ways of life, stayed neutral in the Clone Wars despite keeping contact with the Jedi, and they… they got by."

He frowned. "Til… something happened. When the galaxy went dark, so did the Force, and their magics. The head of their order tried to reach out in the Force, try to figure out what was going on, and—now, I don't pretend to understand all of this, kid, I'm no Jedi—"

"I am a Jedi. But I don't understand it either." Luke gave a quiet laugh, to break the silence. "Some things aren't meant to be understood."

Cody paused. "I reckon you're right."

Then he continued: "Well, anyway, the head of their order reached out, and… Their magics were very, very tied to the light side of the Force. With life, the forest, the general wellbeing of their world. And when she opened herself up to the darkness that the Sith has spread in the galaxy…"

Luke said, "It turned her into that Vampire."

Cody nodded. "Yeah. That's… that's as much as I've figured."

And then everything else had followed from there.

She'd come back to herself as a monster, a mindless creature with the good woman long lost, and the first thing she had done was turn on her own acolytes—transform them into… Ghosts, into monsters that only served her.

The way she'd tried to do it to Luke.

"I don't know how you reversed it, but I'm glad you did." Cody shrugged. "Or else I'd be… a statue right about now."

Luke said, "If the issue was the dark side, the only way to combat it was always going to be the light. Before a single candle, darkness flees."

And love was more than a candle, he thought to himself. Leia jumping in front of him to seize that Ghost and protect him flashed to mind.

Vader, shoving that green saber through the Vampire's chest to save and defend him, flashed to mind.

Cody gave him a look. It was so comfortable on his face that Luke thought it may have been a look he'd given people thousands of times before. "If you say so, sir."

Again with the sir.

Luke stood from the chair. "I… should go now, but thank you for this," he said, as earnestly as he could. "This explains what happened well.

"And… I know of a Captain Rex in the Alliance," he offered, watching Cody's face light up. "If you'd like, you can come back with us and reunite with him?"

Cody swallowed. "That'll be a tough reunion," he said noncommittally, rubbing the back of his neck—no. Not the back of his neck. A tiny scar in the side of his head, as stark white as his hair. "But… yes. Thank you, sir. I'd appreciate that."

Luke smiled. "I'm glad."

* * *

Explaining it all to Leia was significantly easier than he'd expected it to be. They both sat in the bed, propped up against the headboard; she lay there and listened to it all—well, most of it—without intermissions, nodding along at all the right moments, and frowning in thought when he trailed off at the end.

"That's awful," she said.

Luke admittedly, "I feel terribly about just leaving those ladies there where they'd transformed. They just spent twenty years in the body of a monster; we should have helped them—"

"Minerva said the forest would help them, whatever that means," Leia chided. "We… don't understand anything about this, Luke; we could be more harm than help. And we were traumatised, injured, desperate to get back and exhausted as well. There was nothing we ever could have done for them anyway."

Luke nodded. She was right.

Of course she was right. She'd always had good instincts—

"Leia," he said, and his tone made it clear exactly which subject he was switching to. "How… how long have you known that you're Force-sensitive?"

Leia gave a slight self-deprecating laugh. "I've suspected since Bespin," she admitted. "Though it always seemed so absurd… I've _known_ for… a day." She elbowed him lightly, kicking one leg over the other on the covers. "As long as you have."

He laughed in return, and covered her hand with his own.

"Then I suppose my question is… what do you want to do with it?"

Leia was quiet for a moment. "Do I have to do anything with it?"

"Of course not." He scrambled to backtrack. "But—if you _did_ —"

"I do." She cut him off. "I… it's another asset to the Alliance, right? Having one Jedi is excellent, having two…"

"Pursuing the Force is not about propaganda, Leia."

"…I know." She took a deep breath. "But if I think about other reasons, I… I don't want anything to do with Vader. Whether it's the same power or not."

For a moment, Luke wondered about what the implications of _sister_ would do to her.

For a moment, he understood how Ben's silence may have been a mercy.

"You don't have to do anything," he assured her. "It's a useful skill. It's been watching over you all your life, helping you, honing your talents. But it doesn't control you, any more than any Force-wielder can control the Force itself. You don't have to pursue it."

"But you'll teach me if I do want to?"

"I'm sure _my_ Jedi teachers would be better at teaching you."

"Perhaps. But I know you, and I trust you. I'd like you to teach me."

He smiled. "Then it's a deal. I'll teach you… whenever you feel ready to, or want to."

She slipped an arm around him and they leaned into each other for a moment, just enjoying the embrace. "That's all I ask."

They lay in peaceful quiet for a moment, the pain in Luke's wounds chirping like distant cicadas just outside the realms of his awareness.

The stillness just meant that the slightest shift was an avalanche—in the physical world, or in the Force.

He sensed his father's ship descend from the base to Falcou.

"When are you going to talk to him?" Leia asked.

Luke said, "Now, apparently."

"We can still run. Try to escape before he gets here. Luke, you owe him nothing."

But Luke just shook his head. "I'm tired of running," he said. "I just want to hear him explain himself—once and for all."

* * *

It was a strange place to pitch the conversation: in the main dining area of the inn, Martha and any other patrons banished to the backroom by a single glare from Vader. Luke sat himself carefully and methodically down on one of the chairs, making sure he was neither sandwiched in a corner, nor without a clear shot by eye and by foot to the door outside and the door to the stairs, and watched as Vader faffed about on figuring out where he would go: first pacing up and down the opposite side of the room, then standing and looming with his thumbs hooked into his belt no matter how tense that made Luke, then… finally… tentatively seating himself down on a chair a few seats down from Luke, around the table.

It wasn't next to him; there was a significant distance between them. They were at enough of an angle to look each other in the eye. And the chair creaked as he seated himself on it.

The slight alarm that shot through the Force, so quickly he almost could have imagined it, made Luke laugh.

Indignation swiftly followed, but then Vader huffed himself, awkwardly sitting back, turning his mask to Luke… and saying nothing.

Luke said nothing in return.

They sat there, stewing in stiffness, meeting each other's gazes, until Luke finally snapped.

"What did you see?" he asked—bit out with perhaps more force than he intended. He wasn't intending to be rude. He wanted to have an open mind. He wanted—

He wanted to _know_.

What had he seen?

Why had he changed?

_What even—_

He dropped his gaze to the tabletop. The whorls and grain of the wood was fascinating to observe—it was as colourful as all the boughs of the trees this planet sported, but in little granules and rings, like rainbow ripples.

He said, "You called me a fool and a coward for not bowing to your every whim. What changed?"

"I am the fool and the coward."

Luke blinked.

He hadn't expected that.

He found it a hard time to imagine Vader doing anything cowardly _at all_.

"In what way? Beating a small, hastily-trained padawan into submission _first_ before telling him the part you thought was important? Trying to use fear to cow your son into obeying you instead of being kriffing honest about what you wanted, or what you were doing?" He gave a bitter laugh. "What _do_ you even want, Father? Because I don't see how your behaviour before and your behaviour now add up to the same goal, so unless you've changed it—"

Vader said, "You sound so much like your mother."

Luke's words died in his throat. Tears pressed against the backs of his eyes.

He'd never known who his mother was.

He'd— he'd never known, but Vader must have, and the implication that Vader cared about Luke surely followed that he had cared about her too, right—

"How dare you," he said quietly. "Is that the cowardliness? Trying to distract me with my own messed up emotions so you don't have to answer difficult questions."

"I assure you, Luke," Vader got out thickly, "talking about Padmé requires far more strength from me than any other topic might have."

Luke swallowed. "So you did love her."

Vader didn't express shock at the idea he'd ever doubted. He didn't try to get angry, or defensive, or even just sit there, numb.

"I adored her," he intoned. "When I learned she was pregnant, it was the happiest moment of my life."

Luke squeaked.

He didn't even know how to respond to that.

He just squeaked.

Amusement rumbled, then broke like waves on a riverbank.

"I would have done anything to save her—to save you _both_ ," Vader continued. "When I first learned you were alive, I wanted nothing more than to find you, be with you, _know my son_. There… there was no threat greater than Palpatine, I knew that, and I knew that I did not have the power to remove him on my own. I needed you."

"So you tortured my friends. Cut off my hand." He shivered. _"Terrorised_ me mentally, for _weeks_ , chased me here, into those woods—"

"It is not my fault that you ran."

"What was I to expect if you'd captured me!?" he shouted. "Another prosthetic hand to join the first?"

Vader flinched.

"The Ghost showed me visions of you dying," he said.

Luke swallowed.

"It— it began with a vision of you dying from its attack, right there. Despite the Princess's trick, it killed you, and you passed away at my feet. Then you died in that _ridiculous stunt_ with the speeder over the river—do you have any idea how afraid I was as you did that? Your ISB file indicates you cannot swim—"

"I have an _ISB file_?"

"—and that river was rushing at speeds faster than you could imagine. You would have _died_. Of course I was furious!"

A moment of silence.

"But… in the moment… I misspoke. I did not intend to alienate you as such, even further."

"Don't worry," Luke said bitterly, "I'm not sure it would've been possible to alienate me further."

Vader conceded, heavy and pained, "Perhaps not."

He tilted his helmet down; Luke got the impression that for a moment, he had closed his eyes. "I… the visions were endless. For all the hours you were unconscious, for every moment that I couldn't sense you, they continued unceasing. You have put yourself in such danger, so many times, these past years— _I_ have put you in such great danger… I could only reassure myself they were unreal when you awakened again."

He admitted, quieter, "I could only summon the will to fight the paralysis when I realised you were moving for the Jedi Temple, and even greater peril."

Luke… didn't know what to say for that.

"It has become evident to me, out of pure desperation," Vader said, picking his words out of his mouth like picking fleas off a womprat's pelt: unpleasant, but necessary, "that my current methods are not yielding results with you."

Luke snorted.

"You are far too _stubborn_." And his tone was heavy with criticism until—

"Like you, I suppose?"

—until it softened massively. "Like your mother, again."

Luke bowed his head.

"You will tell me about her later," he told him, despite the way his heart hammered in his chest at the idea he would ever demand something of Darth Vader like that, "but first you need to answer the question and stop careening around the canyon."

Vader gave a sound that was half laugh, half scoff. "Very well. I want to protect you. My attempts to do so with force are not working—you are far too capable for that. So I will offer my services and… work with you, instead."

Luke narrowed his eyes. "This seems convenient."

"Things can become very convenient when you simplify them. I loved your mother, and I love you. I will do anything to protect you—and I know that no loyalty to the Empire will outweigh that. That… that is all that matters to me."

Luke couldn't help it: he gasped.

He pressed his hand to his mouth and tried not to cry.

He'd said those words so matter-of-factly…

Vader watched him with something that felt like a peculiar blend of melancholy and… affection. "Life is simpler when you're fixing things."

Luke… nodded.

Got a grip on his voice, and said, "Yeah. It is."

"I cannot make up for what I have done. I never will—particularly when… when I have done things you do not even know, yet. I cannot possibly hope to atone for it all. But I can try."

"You don't need to try," Luke said. "You will do, instead."

Vader snorted. "Yes," he said. "There is no try, indeed."

"What are the logistics of this?" Luke asked—because someone had to, and Leia would lecture him later if he did not. "Are you going to join the Rebellion outright? Are you going to act as a spy? Are…" He swallowed. "Are you going to take us with you, or let us go?"

Luke didn't realise he was holding his breath until, "Let you go, naturally," made him release it.

Vader lifted a hand towards Luke, but he was too far away to reach him; instead, a cool tendril of the Force tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. "I could not keep you on the _Executor_ , my son. I could neither hold onto you…" Luke laughed, muttering a quiet _Damn right_. "…nor protect you, there. Palpatine has eyes everywhere."

"Does he have eyes here?" Luke glanced at the door—to where Martha had vanished.

"Possibly."

"Then he will notice if you defect."

"Yes. I… must continue to appear to serve his will, until the time is right." Vader hesitated. "And… you will not accept Sith training from me."

"No." Luke was unambiguous on that. "I will not."

"And I saw you in that forest—all that darkness, and still you shone a light…" He paused, anger growling just under the surface of his tone. "The Vampire tried so hard to corrupt you, and still you shone a light for minutes on end."

_"Minutes?"_

"You were in its grip," Vader ground out, "for far longer than I intended you to be. Getting the angle of the lightsaber right… getting the lightsaber itself, getting the Vampire _off of you_ …" He paused. "You are far, far stronger than you give yourself credit for."

Luke glanced down at the rainbow ripples on the table again, tears sparking in his eyes. "Oh."

"I could not turn you to the dark side against your will. You will not turn." A moment of silence, punctuated by the rasping cycle of the respirator.

Then, words plucked from his mouth again—less like fleas on a womprat, more like _teeth_ from a womprat—"So you must return to your Jedi Masters and complete your training."

The words dropped in the air like rocks into water.

Luke stared.

Then stared some more.

Then he _howled_.

Laughter broke out of him—mirthless, shocked, _relieved_ laughter. He sensed Vader fuming at it, and laughed even harder.

"You…" He sobered up again. "You're really dedicated to this, aren't you? You—"

"Of course I am dedicated to this," Vader said. "Of course I am dedicated to _you_."

Luke didn't think before he'd flung himself out of his chair and flung his arms around his neck.

Vader, respirator or not, stopped breathing.

Luke stopped breathing as well at his own audacity.

This was the man who had killed Ben.

This was the monster who'd destroyed the Jedi.

This was the Sith Lord who'd chased them across the galaxy, tortured his friends, hacked off his hand—

Vader lifted two hard, metal limbs to embrace him right back. They dug into his back and held him close, Vader turning his mask into Luke's shoulder like a bantha nuzzling its cub.

This was his _father_.

"There are other things I need to tell you," Vader murmured. "Intelligence your princess would be very interested in, things that you, the destroyer of the Death Star, would very much like to know…"

"It can wait," Luke choked out.

Vader moved his hand up his back, rubbing it gently, like he was comforting a scared child.

"You are right," he conceded. "In the meantime, I… can tell you about your mother."

Luke hiccupped.

Drew back from the hug, despite Vader's tight grip not wanting to let go, and looking at his father with watery eyes.

"I would like that very much," he said.

* * *

He and Leia left Venaira without Han, without having run into Fett. It was, on all official levels, a failure. Leia was certainly sceptical and irritated.

Sceptical and irritated, until she looked at the faint smile Luke hadn't been able to dispel all day, and she softened.

"Seeing you that happy makes me want it to be real just as much," she admitted.

"It's real," he promised, and drew back the lever that sent the _Lodestar_ hurtling through hyperspace.

Leia tightened her fingers around the data disc Vader had given them, glancing at it like it was a bomb that would take them clean off. "If you say so. I'll still have to clear it with Command."

"I know. And I'm hopeful about that."

She smiled. "Of course you are." She stood from her seat in the cockpit and Luke followed as they headed to the back room. She punched the button to light up the dejarik table they'd stolen from the _Falcon_ and sat down to consider her move.

She made it.

"What next?" Luke asked as he made his next move. The holographic houjix lumbered across the board.

Leia shot him a look. "The way you say that implies you already have an idea."

"Of course I do." He winced as she took his houjix—bloodily. "First we go to rescue Han. If he's not here, he's almost definitely in Jabba's Palace. Lando will report in soon—"

"And then we devise our plan and go get him," she agreed. "You even have a lightsaber to do it with, now." She watched him as he made his move and swiftly took his piece—again. That poor monnok. "But what _else_ do you have in mind?"

"I'm going to go back to Dagobah—where my Jedi Master lives—and finish my training. Become a fully fledged Jedi Knight," he said. "I was wondering if you wanted to come with me."

"Train as a Jedi?" She pinched her lips. "I already said—"

"I know. But just so you can see what it's like. Understand it."

She frowned, tilting her head sideways, dejarik game forgotten. "I'll consider it."

He nodded. "That's all I ask."

"Anything else?"

He took a deep breath.

This was it.

Moment of truth.

"Do you remember your birth mother, Leia?"

Her frown deepened. "Yes… but only slightly. Images, feelings…"

"Do you know her name?"

She nodded. "My parents told me when I turned sixteen. She— she was Padmé Amidala, the Queen and Senator from Naboo." Her face split in a grin as she said it.

"You're very proud of her." Luke tried not to smile too widely himself, in response to that.

Leia was his sister.

_Leia was his sister._

"Of course I am. She was an _icon_. She… died pregnant, supposedly, because of attacks by her political enemies, and my father hid me in case those enemies came after me."

"Did anyone know who the sire was?" he asked.

Leia shook her head. "No. I didn't know. If my father knew, he never told me."

"If I had a suspicion"—it was a lot more than a suspicion, but he was starting off slow—"about who it was…?"

She tilted her head.

Considered it.

"Would it matter?" she asked. "My parents were my parents. Biology had nothing to do with it."

"I know that. But… in this case, I think it would be."

Leia gave him a look. "You're being annoyingly cagey."

"If it mattered. If it definitely mattered, and could affect things and your own perception of things, would you want to know?"

Leia nodded. "I would. Whether it was in a good way or a bad way."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. It wouldn't matter to me—not much." Luke creased his brows, unable to grasp why—"I am made of more than my flesh and blood. I am not the genes that constructed me into rough, unformed matter. I am _me_."

"You're a luminous being," Luke agreed wholeheartedly.

She laughed. "I guess you could put it that way. What was it you wanted to tell me?"

He took a deep breath.

Closed his eyes.

Opened them again.

"My mother was Padmé Amidala, too," he said.

She stared at him.

Her eyes blew wide.

She brought a hand up to her mouth, trembling.

And, as he tried to take her other hand for comfort, she threw herself forwards and he caught her in a hug, tears from her cheek mingling with the tears from his, and they clutched each other tightly, tightly, not letting go, as their ship shot through hyperspace towards the Rebel base, towards Han, towards the future, and beyond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand we're finished!
> 
> Thank you so much to all of you who read it, and I hope you--especially you, Lady--enjoyed!


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